# Occult Japan/Miracles

MIRACLES.
I.
ULLARDS will always deem delicacy incompatible with strength. To touch a subject lightly is for them not to touch it at all. Yet the phrase "dead in earnest" might perhaps hint to them that there is more virtue in liveliness than they suspect. It is quite possible to see the comic side of things without losing sight of their serious aspect. In fact, not to see both sides is to get but a superficial view of life, missing its substance. So much for the people. As for the priests, it is only necessary to say that few are more essentially sincere and lovable than the Shintō ones; and few religions in a sense more true. With this preface for life-preserver I plunge boldly into the miracles.
Kamiwaza or god-arts are of many sorts, but to Japanese piety are all of a kind, ​though some are spectacular, some merely useful. Causing the descent of the Thunder-God; calling down fire from Heaven; rooting burglars to the spot, and so forth, to say nothing of killing snakes and bringing them to life again, together with innumerable like performances, are all included in the category, and are all simple enough affairs to the truly good. Nichiren, for example, broke in two the blade of his would-be executioner by exorcism taught him of the Shintō priests. The fact without the explanation may be read of in histories of Japan.
In Shintō the miracles are not so important matters as the incarnations; for good reason, since the god but shows his power in the one case, his self in the other. Yet the church takes pleasure in displaying them for pious purposes. Any fête-day of the possessing sects is more likely than not to have a miracle for central show, and for his great semi-annual festivals my friend the head priest of the Shinshiu sect has announcement of a couple of them printed regularly as special attractions on his invitation cards.
So far as piety classifies them at all, it ​does so according to their scenic effect or for the difficulty of doing them. From a psychologic point of view, however, they fall very conveniently under two heads: subjective miracles and objective ones. An account of the former may properly precede, since it includes those which, on the whole, are considered the greater.
Chief among the subjective miracles are what are called collectively the Sankei or the three great rites. The bond connecting the trio is apparently purely extrinsic, consisting solely in agreement in greatness. In consequence, on very important festivals lasting two or three days, they are performed in turn successively.
II.
The first and simplest of these Three Great Rites is the Kugadachi or Ordeal by Boiling Water.
The word kugadachi is archaic Japanese. In Hepburn's dictionary a dagger stabs it obsolete. Furthermore, the departed is given no character, being epitaph ed solely in the Japanese sidescript. Such absence of ideograph implies for the expression an ​age antedating the time when the Japanese learned to write; an inference fully borne out by folk-lore. For the ordeal is mentioned more than once in the Kojiki, and seems to have been quite popular in prehistoric times. In those direct days it was applied as touchstone to actual guilt; in these more teleologic times merely as test of theoretic guilelessness.
The arrangements for the rite are primitively picturesque. A huge iron pot, as it might be some witches' caldron, is ceremoniously set in the midst of the garden or court. About it is then built a magic square. Four cut bamboo, tufted at their tops, are stuck into the ground some eight feet apart. From frond to frond are hung hempen ropes. This makes an airy sort of palisade, designed to keep out the undesirable devils. Just outside of the space thus inclosed is placed a deal table, on which one or more deal boxes, open on the side, make consecrated pedestals for the gohei. The gohei are very important affairs, of which I shall have much to say later. For the moment it will suffice to state that they are zigzag strips of paper festooning a wand, and ​are the outward and visible symbols of the gods. In front of them upon the table stands a saucer of salt; while behind them bamboo fronds stuck into stands rise into a background of plumes.
Spring water is then brought in and poured into the caldron. On my first occasion of witnessing the miracle I was at this point graciously permitted to dab my little finger into the water. I quite fail now to see why I desired to do so, but I am very glad I did. My request turned out a most discreet indiscretion, productive of much spiritual significance later on.
A fire was then kindled beneath, and we, professionals and amateurs, stood round about the square, watching for the water to boil. When at last the steam started to rise, the officiating acolyte emerged from the holy bathhouse near by, where he had been purifying himself, clad in a single white robe. That is, the robe was white ​theoretically; practically it was a post-diluvian gray, a hue which the rite soon sufficiently explained.
On entering the mystic square he clapped his hands; the invariable Japanese method this, of summoning anybody from gods to servants. It is worth noting here, as instancing the familiar terms on which the Japanese stand with their gods, that they should thus indifferently summon deities and domestics.
The young priest then started to circumambulate the kettle through a whole series of rites, each made up of an endlessly similar basis of speech and action. Now it is all very well to preach against vain repetitions, but with anthropomorphic gods, as with ordinary mortals, it simply has to be done if one would succeed in one's request. The Shintō priests realize this fact, and thoroughly act upon it, too thoroughly to suit one who looks impatiently past the repetitions to their result. Like all good works, its practical effect is on the worker.
Pantomime and prayer wove the double strand on which his more particular beads of rosary were told; uncouth finger-twists and monotonic formulæ pointed by expressive ​guttural grunts. Upon this undercurrent of wellnigh automatic action the man was insensibly carried along through successive cycles of rite. Beginning at the north end of the square, he first made incantation facing the caldron; then walking absorbedly round to the south, digitating as he did so, he faced the kettle and repeated his spell. Continuing as before, he went through the same performance at the west side; then at the east, the northwest, the northeast, and the southwest, making thus at least a half circuit between each point. All this was most particular; though as a matter of fact the orientation of the points was hypothetical.
This constituted the simple motif, as it were. No sooner was it completed, than he started on it again with variations. First it was salt. From the saucer on the stand he helped himself to a handful of this, and making circuits of the kettle as before, deposited a pinch of it at each of the compass points in turn, digitating with the free hand as he did so, after the manner of one enjoining implicit compliance with his act. After this he tossed more salt into the air toward each of the four quarters of the heavens.
​In the same way he made the rounds with a flint and steel, scattering sparks at the proper places. Then he took the gohei-wand, and exorcised the water in like fashion, by cuts in the air of imprecatory violence. Lastly, he made the circuit with two bamboo fronds, one in each hand, which he dipped into the seething liquid, and then, lifting them loaded with boiling water, lashed the air above his head, the spray falling in a scalding shower-bath all over him. This he did north, south, east, west, and then over again from the beginning, on and on, in one continuous round.
To this boiling shower-bath there seemed no end. Round and round the man went, religiously compassing his points, repeating the scalding douche at each with ever-growing self-abandonment. Up to this final phase of the affair he had seemed to be carrying on the rite; now, the rite seemed to be carrying him on. Still, circuit after circuit he made, his exaltation rising with each fresh dip; till he was as one possessed, lashing maniacally first the water and then the air with the fronds, scattering the scalding douche not only over himself, but over all ​the innocent bystanders as well, giving them thus, by the way, the most convincing proof of the genuineness of the feat. Higher and higher rose the pitch of his possession till, at last, nature could no farther go, and from the acme of his paroxysm he all at once collapsed into a lump of limp rag upon the ground. The others rushed in and bore him away, the wilted semblance of a man.
While he was gone to prepare himself once more for this world, the high priest explained to me the spirit of the rite.
The moon, it seems, is the cause of it all; a first step in elucidation, to follow which requires less stretch of the western imagination than the next succeeding one. For that lunacy-inducing body is, it appears, the origin of water; on the lucus a non principle, we must suppose, inasmuch as it has none to speak of. But, whatever the cause, the spirit of water resides in the moon; the spirit of cold water, be it understood, cold water and hot water being, in Japanese eyes, quite different substances with different names. The spirit of hot water is the spirit of fire. This rose to the water in the caldron from the fire below at the moment the water boiled.
​"Now," as the priest quaintly put it, "just as there are veins in man's body, and fissures in the earth, so are there arteries in the air; and to each spirit its own arteries. When, therefore, the spirit of water is properly besought, it descends from its abode, the moon, by its appropriate paths, and dispossesses the spirit of fire, which sinks back again to the charcoal whence it came." And of course the hot water is no longer hot.
This happy result is worked to easier perfection amid the purity of the peaks. It is, of course, an irrelevant detail that water at those altitudes should boil at a lower temperature. The thin air of the peaks is, for purely pious reasons, conducive to all manner of etherealization.
In addition to the lunar action on the boiling water, the performer himself is, so the priest said, temporarily possessed by the lunar spirit, and so is rendered insensible to the heat, which, as we just saw, does not exist, so that the second action might seem to savor of the superfluous. A double negative of the sort appears, however, to make assurance doubly sure.
When the man returned, clothed and in ​his right mind once more, he was asked whether he felt the heat of the water during the ordeal. He replied that sometimes he did and sometimes he did not; in this instance he said he had felt nothing. He was a frail-looking youth, of ecstatic eye, evidently a good "subject," though still in the early stages of his novitiate. The head priest, a much stronger man, and an adept, said he always felt the water, but not the heat of it an interesting distinction.
Here came in the importance of my dabble in the basin. Though it had been but to the extent of a little finger,—and that by religious permission,—it had, it appeared, partially spoiled the miracle on that side of the caldron, preventing the water there from becoming as cold as elsewhere. For the acolyte averred that he had perceived a difference between the two. But he had just said that he had not felt the heat of any part of it. He had therefore detected a distinction without a difference, a degree of divinity quite transcending the simply not feeling at all. Yet he was unconscious at the time, and conscientious afterward. By partially spoiling the miracle, then, it would seem that I had considerably improved it.
III.
The second miracle of the Three Great Rites is the Huvatari or the Walking Barefoot over a Bed of Live Coals.
To the faithful this is one of the regular stock miracles, and when you become well known to the profession for a collector of such curios, you shall have offers of performance in your own back-yard. If also you be friend to the high-priest of the Shinshiu sect, you may have a chance to witness it in spring and autumn in special glory in the grounds of the sect's head temple in town. There, beside the miracle itself, shall you see its scarcely less curious setting, an intent multitude framing the walkers round about, worked up at last to part participation itself. For in its working the miracle is eminently democratic. Even professionally it is not a star performance, but an exhibition by the whole company. Fellowship, they say, adds to the purity of the rite. It certainly conduces to exaltation. In the second place, performance is not confined to the professionals. They indeed have the pas, but after they have thus broken the ice the ​populace is permitted to indulge itself in the same way to satiety. For while the bed is possessed by the god any sufficiently pure person may tread it with impunity to his cuticle and great gain to his good luck. The two go together. The difficulty comes in, in accurately estimating the degree of one's own purity. If one be pure enough he will cross unscathed; if not, his more material understanding will speedily acquaint him of his deficiency. It proves a sad trial to doubting Thomases. In their case, to previous anguish of spirit is added after agony of sole.
The bed to be traversed is usually from twelve to eighteen feet long and from three to six feet wide. The width of the bed is not so vital to the miracle as the length of it; the length it is that has to be walked over and grows tedious. And the purity needed to do this increases pari passu with the length—only in geometrical progression. Here it is not the first step that costs, but the last one.
In Ryōbu the bed of state is an eight-poster. Eight bamboo, still fronded, are stuck into the ground, making slender posts ​to a palisade about the pyre. Between them runs a hempen rope from frond to frond about five feet above the ground. From this hang forty-four gohei. These details are important in ordinary cases, as the bamboo are dedicated to the eight heavenly dragons, rainmakers and drawers of water generally. But if the ground be holy, such, outer guarding becomes unnecessary; and indeed it is a fundamental principle in esoterics that the purer the performer the less paraphernalia he needs. Pure Shintō is more simple in its rites than Ryōbu.
Ordinarily the bed is made as follows: A mattress of straw mats is laid upon the ground, and on this a sheet of seashore sand. This is done in order that everything may be as pure as possible. On top of this sheet are laid first twigs and then sticks criss-cross, after the usual, approved principle of laying a fire. In the very centre of the pyre a gohei is stood up on its wand.
In theory the bed is laid four-square to the compass points. In practice one side is conveniently assumed to be north, which is just as good in the eyes of the gods, who are sublimely superior to such mere matters of fact.
​For fuel, pine wood is the proper article. Sticks free from knots are preferred, for resin lurks in the knots and has a spirit hard to quell. So long as a man is truly good he does not care. But the least admixture of sin in his soul causes him to mind these knotty spots acutely.
Pine is still used in the country and in town when the authorities are not aware of the fact. Legally, however, charcoal is enjoined instead, owing to the danger of conflagration from flying wood-ashes; and at the high-priest's functions the law is dutifully observed.
To give life to the drama, I will set the scene of it where I first saw it, in the grounds of the head temple of the Shinshiu sect, in Kanda, the heart of Tōkyō. The crowd had already collected by the time we arrived; the bed had been laid and fired, and the whole temple company, with the exception of the high-priest himself, were at the moment busied about the pyre, some fanning the flames assiduously with open fans strapped to the end of long poles, while others pounded the coals flat again with staves. All were robed in white and were ​barefooted. The thing made a fine pageant, framed by the eager faces of the multitude, and set in the cool, clear light of a September afternoon.
When they judged the bed to have been sufficiently made, they began upon the invitation to the god to descend into it. A good old soul full of devoutness and dignity led off. Proceeding solemnly to the northern end of the glowing charcoal, he faced the bed, clapped his hands, bowed his head in prayer, and then with energetic finger-twistings cabalistically sealed the same. Then he started slowly to circumambulate the pyre, stopping at the middle of each side to repeat his act.
When he was well under way, another followed in repetition; then a third and a fourth, and so on down to the youngest, a youth of ecstatic eye, who threw himself body and soul into the rite. Seven of them in all were thus strung out in line walking round about the pyre and sealing it digitally in purification. As it was not incumbent on the exorcists, once started, to travel at the same rate, the march soon took on the look of a holy go-as-you-please race.
​The bed was circuited interminably, beyond the possibility of count, so riveting to one's attention was the pantomime. At the conclusion of the dedicatory prayer the salt made its appearance. For, damaging as the statement may sound, every Shintō miracle has to be taken with a great many grains of it. In this instance the salt was used unstintedly. A large bowl filled with it stood handily on one corner of the temple veranda, and each priest, as he came up, helped himself to a fistful, and then proceeded to sow it upon the coals, finger-twisting with the free hand as he did so. The sowing was done with some vehemence, each throw being pointed by a violent grunt that so suited the fury of the action it sounded ominously like an imprecation. But it was only an emphatic command to the evil spirits to avaunt.
After considerable salt had thus been sown from the cardinal points, the head of the company struck sparks from a flint and steel in the same oriented way over the bed, the others still throwing on salt promiscuously for general efficacy. In addition to what was thus scattered over the coals, a mat at either end of the bed was spread with salt.
​During all this time the high-priest, who took no active part in the rite himself, being busied with his duties as host, was nevertheless engaged upon a private furtherance of the affair, quite obliviously, he told me afterward. It consisted in breathing modulately in and out of his pursed-up lips. This action is a great purifier; as we shall see later. It is only to the godless that it suggests an inexpert whistler vainly attempting a favorite tune.
A pause in the rite now informed everybody that the god had come, and everybody watched intently for what was to follow; with mixed emotion, I fancy, for the entertainment partook of the characters of a mass, a martyrdom, and a melodrama all in one.
The original old gentleman once more led off. Taking post at the bed's northern end, he piously clapped his hands, muttered a few consecrated words, and then salting his soles by a rub on the mat, stepped boldly on to the burning bed and strode with dignified unconcern the whole length of it. He did this without the least symptom of discomfort or even of notice of his own act.
​In their order the others followed, each crossing with as much indifference as if the bed were mother-earth. When all had gone over, all went over again.
It was now the turn of the laymen. The passing of the priests had been a pageant, dignified and slow; the procession of the common folk was its burlesque. The priests had seemed superior to the situation; their lay brethren often fell ludicrously below it.
Any one who would was invited to try his foot at it; not, I may add, in the spirit of somewhat similar secular invitation at the circus. No deception whatever lay hidden behind the permit. For the pure are sure to cross in safety, and to him who crosses with impunity, substantial benefits accrue.
Many bystanders availed themselves of the privilege. Indeed, not a few had come there for the purpose. Some did so on the pious understanding that the fire could not longer burn; others apparently upon a more skeptical footing. One firm believer incurred no little odium for the extreme character of his convictions. So persuaded was he of the now harmless state of the charcoal that he sauntered solemnly across, rapt in revery, ​quite oblivious to a string of less devout folk whom his want of feeling kept in mid-bed on tenterhooks behind him. In the extremity of their woe they began hopping undignifiedly up and down, and finally in their desperation pushed him off at the last, to his very near capsizing. For in spirit he was somewhere else, utterly unsuspicious of a sudden irreligious shove from behind.
Another individual found it hotter than he had hoped, and, after taking one step stolidly enough, lost all sense of self-respect at the second, and began skipping from foot to foot in vain attempts at amelioration, to the derision of the lookers-on, especially of such as did not dare venture themselves. Apparently, he thought better of it a little later, or perhaps he found himself more scared than scarred. For soon after I noticed that he had adventured himself again, and this time, to his credit, with becoming majesty of march.
Indeed, the procession was as humorous as humanity. All sorts and conditions of men, women, and children went over first and last. All were gain to religion, for nothing showed more conspicuous than the buoyant ​power of faith. It was not the sole, but the self that trod there, stripped of social covering. In the heat of the moment the walkers forgot their fellow-men and walked alone with their god. Characters came out vividly in the process, like hidden writing before the fire. Each contrasted oddly with its neighbors, often treading close on its opposite's heels, jostling emotion itself by the juxtaposition. Now a sturdy jinrikisha man, persuaded that the crossing would bring him fares, went over as a matter of business, and in his wake a small boy, unable to resist so divine a variety of tittle-ties on thin ice, followed for doubtless a very different reason. Then a family in due order of etiquette ventured successfully along in a line. Now a dear old grandam, bent by years to a question mark of life, hobbled bravely across notwithstanding; and now a fair little girl, straight and slim as an admiration point, performed the feat vicariously, but I doubt not as effectively, in the arms of one of the priests. A touch of the fine in all this that tended to film the eyes, and lend the scene a glamour which, if not strictly religious, was its very close of kin.
​Many of the lay-folk, not content with one crossing, returned for more; the church kindly permitting any number of repetitions. Indeed, the performance was exceedingly popular.
When the last enthusiast had had enough, the embers were prodded by the poles into pi. This airing of his bed causes the god not unnaturally to depart. After he has gone no one may cross unscathed; and no one attempted to do so. Under coals are certainly more fiery than surface ones, especially if the latter have been well sprinkled with salt.
A final prayer pointed with finger-pantomime closed the function.
The use of the salt deserves further mention. In this instance it was a salient feature of the rite, and had been enjoined by no less a personage, it appeared, than the god himself. But as the deity had commanded it under the somewhat poetic title of "Flower of the Waves," the high-priest had been at first at a loss, so he said, to comprehend the divine meaning. Later the god had condescended to an explanation. Nevertheless, this flowery title, so I am ​given to understand, is in common secular use.
To the undevout mind the salting of the bed would seem to conduce to the success of the feat. For salt is a very glutton of heat, and will do pretty much anything to get it, however menial, from melting snow on horse-car tracks to freezing ice-cream. Cooling coals is therefore quite in character for it. This, its unappeasable appetite for caloric is not unknown to the profession. The priests nobly admitted that the salt mitigated the full rigor of the miracle.
The miracle does not, however, depend for performance upon its use; only one has to be holier to work the miracle without it. At times fire-walking is done quite fresh; preferably amid the purity of the hills, with whose freshness its own is then in keeping. But it is occasionally so performed in town.
The origin of the rite mounts back to extreme antiquity. It dates from before there were men to walk, having been instituted of the gods in the days when they alone lived in the land. Walking, indeed, is not of its essence; peripatetic proof being but a ​special mode of showing one's immunity to fire. The possibility of such immunity was first demonstrated by a lady, the goddess who rejoices in the simple but somewhat protracted name of Ko-no-hana-saka-ya-hime-no-mikoto. It sounds better when translated: the Goddess who makes the Flowerbuds to open. She is perhaps better known as the Goddess of Fuji. She invented the miracle in order to persuade her doubting spouse, the god Ninigi-no-mikoto, of the falsehood of certain suspicions which he had been ungallant enough to entertain about her. She built herself a house against her confinement, and then, after the babe was born, burnt it to the ground over her head, without so much as scorching herself or the baby. This of course reassured Ninigi-no-mikoto, and is chiefly noteworthy as an instance of a miracle converting a god himself. Those who care to read all the evidence in the case will find it in the Nihonshoki, an invaluable work in fifteen volumes of archaic Japanese.
Walking over the coals with impunity is attributable only in part to virtue in the performer. Immunity from harm is chiefly due ​to the fact that the fire has lost its power to burn. It has parted with its spirit. Materially considered, the fire is still there, but spiritually speaking it is extinct. This is why, when it has been once exorcised, the veriest tyro may cross it without a blister. The spirit of water has descended to it from the moon and driven the spirit of fire out of the coals. Any skeptic might soon prove this to his own satisfaction by just walking over the coals himself, were true piety compatible with doubt.
"The object of the rite," so the high-priest expounded it to me, "is that the populace may see that the god when duly besought can take away the burning spirit of fire while permitting the body of it to remain. For so can he do with the hearts of men; the bad spirit may be driven out and the good put in its place while still the man continues to exist."
To the coldly critical eye of science two things conduce to the performance of this feat. One is the toughness of the far eastern sole. The far Oriental inherits a much less sensitive nervous organization than is the birthright of a European, and his cuticle ​is further calloused to something not unlike leather by constant exposed use. This leaves the distance to be traversed between the natural sensitiveness and the induced insensitiveness considerably less than it would be with us. The intervening step is the result of exaltation. By first firmly believing that no pain will be felt and then inducing a state of ecstasy whose preoccupation the afferent sensation fails to pierce, no pain is perceived.
More than this, the burn is probably not followed by the same after-effects. For there is a more or less complete absence of blisters. The part burnt is burnt like cloth, and that is the end of it. No inconvenience whatever follows the act among the truly good. In less devout folk small blisters are raised, but without noticeable annoyance. The fact is that in burns generally it is the cure that constitutes the complaint. It is the body's feverish anxiety to repair the damage that causes all the trouble. Even in the severest burns very little of us is ever burnt up, but our own alarm that it may be induces our consequent inflammation. Delbœuf showed this conclusively upon one of his hypnotized patients.
​Faith, therefore, does in very truth work the miracle. We know this now that miracles have ceased to be miraculous; which is perhaps a little late for purely pious purposes.
IV.
We now come to the third miracle of the three; the Tsurugi-watari, or the Climbing the Ladder of Sword-blades.
Among the incredible feats that we are asked to believe of Indian jugglers, not the least astounding is their reputed power of treading and even of lying with impunity upon sword-blades; an ability which some of us are inclined to credit to the verb in its other sense. Nevertheless, the same startling if unnecessary bit of acrobatism may be seen every spring in Tōkyō quite secularly done among the peep-shows about Asakusa. To such, however, as still remain skeptical on the subject, it may prove convincing to learn that the thing is a miracle, one of the great miracles of the Shintō church.
It dates from a dateless antiquity. In the Nihonshoki mention is made of it older than Jimmu Tennō himself, the first human ​Emperor of Japan. Its first instance seems to have been a case of necessity. When the two gods, Futsu-nushi-no-kami and Také-mika-tsuchi-no-kami were sent from heaven to request O-ana-muchi-no-kami to resign the Japanese throne, we are told that on coming into his presence they imposingly planted their swords hilt downwards in the ground, and then, arms akimbo, seated themselves stolidly upon the points. Unlike the bashful individual who sat down upon the spur of the moment only to rise hastily again, their seats seemed to have proved quite comfortable, for they delivered a long and somewhat tedious harangue in that not ineffective attitude.
This style of camp-stool had, however, gone out of fashion when I made the acquaintance of the miracle last September; the modern mode of doing the thing being to set the blades edge up and then walk over them. The walking was about to be performed, so rumor said, at Hachioji, which it appeared was one of the habitats of the miracle. For shrines have their pet miracles as they have their patron gods. Upon investigation rumor turned out to be correct in all but date, ​the walking having unfortunately taken place the previous April, at the annual festival of the shrine of which it was the specialty, and would not be repeated until the April following. Seven months seeming long to wait even for a miracle, I ventured to suggest to the priests a private performance. They instantly expressed themselves as very willing to give it, stipulating merely for a week's prior mortification of the flesh. Such indulgence being a necessity to any Shintō miracle, the date fixed on for the spectacle was set duly ahead, and some ten days later, on a veritable May morning in early October, we left Tōkyō for Hachioji by the morning train to witness it.
There were five of us, including two globe-trotting friends of mine, who, having seen one miracle, had developed a strong amateur interest in religion, and Asa, my "boy."
From Hachioji we were bowled in jinrikisha some four miles out of the town to a small temple known as Hachiman Jinja, situate on the outskirts of the hamlet of Moto-Hachioji. The temple buildings, well parasoled by ancient trees, stood upon a spur overlooking the little valley where the ​grass-grown roofs of the village peeped domestically from amid the crops. An army of mulberry bushes in very orderly files flanked them round about, silk-worm rearing being the village occupation; so much so that it had given its name to the local pilgrim-club under whose auspices the function was to be performed.
Two gods shared the temple very cordially; O-ana-muchi-no-kami, the right-hand god of the Ontaké trio, and Hachiman Daijin, the god of war. O-ana-muchi-no-kami was the patron god of the feat we had come to see. He himself was wont not only to walk upon the blades, but at times went so far as actually to go to sleep upon them, a seemingly useless bit of bravado only paralleled by the pains some people are at to tell you how they doze in their dentist's chair.
From the head priest's house we made our way up a hill to the temple. As we turned the corner of the outer buildings we caught sight, at the farther end of the grounds, of so startling a scaffold that we all instinctively came to a point—of admiration—before it. Evidently this was the material means to the miracle, for against it a ladder, ​with notches suggestively vacant of rungs led up to a frail plank platform raised astonishingly high into the air. We had somehow assumed that the sword-walking took place on the flat, and not, as it appeared it was to be done, skyward.
When we had sufficiently recovered from our first surprise to examine this startling structure, we found it to consist of four stout poles, planted securely in the earth, and braced by cross-ties, holding two thirds way up the above-mentioned platform, upon which stood a shrine. The height of this upper story above the ground proved to be thirteen feet. Upon a secular ladder at the side some priests were giving a few finishing touches to the work.
Inclosing the scaffold stood four fronded bamboo, one at each corner of a square, connected eight feet up by a straw rope, with sixteen gohei, four on a side, pendent from it. This poetic palisade kept out the evil spirits; a bamboo railing below kept out small boys.
Upon the shrine above, which was simply a deal table, stood, dignifiedly straight, and commandingly lined in a row, three gohei ​upon their wands. In front of them, upon a lower table, stood five others, colored respectively, yellow, red, black, white, and blue, the five far eastern elemental colors. The upper row represented the gods of construction, placed here to keep an eye on the scaffolding; the lower, the gods of the earth. Flanking the gohei stood two branches of sakaki, the sacred tree of Shintō, draped with lace-like filaments of gohei. At the corners of the platform four tufted bamboo, joined by a straw-rope hung with gohei, made a second palisade, miniature of the one below; while from a pole at the back floated a banner inscribed: Heavenly Gods, Earthly Gods.
Half way up the scaffold two paper placards, one on either side the ladder, challenged the eye. The right-hand one gave the functions and functionaries of the festival: the Principal Purifier, the Vice-Purifier, the Chief of Offerings, the Purifying Door, and the God-Arts; the offices preceded, the names of the persons followed. The other specified the various functions of the God-Arts themselves, and the names of those who bore them, a certain Mr. Konichi being down as Drawing the Bow. This, it seemed, was to ​be taken in a purely ceremonial sense, the real archer being Mr. Kobayashi.
For his benefit, four short posts about four feet high had been planted directly under the platform, ready to receive two swords, on the blades of which he was to stand while engaged in his act. We could not help wondering how he was to get upon them. Indeed, the elevating nature of the whole performance was not the least impressive part of it. The reason for this lay, we were told, in the intrinsic purity of high places, because above the ordinary level of mankind. Certainly, with a ladder of sword-blades for sole means of approach, the platform above did not seem likely to prove overcrowded.
On the left stood the Kagura-dō or dancing-stage, filled with musicians, who were at the moment engaged in tuning up—not a highly melodious performance at best. They kindly desisted to let us lunch upon the stage, which we did while the other preparations went on, to the open-mouthed enjoyment of many small villagers, who had already begun to collect for the occasion. As soon as lunch was over the swords were brought out. They had not been lashed in place ​before, in order that we might first inspect them. This we now did to our satisfaction. They were, one and all, old samurai blades, as sharp as one would care to handle—from the hilt—and much sharper than he would care to handle in any less legitimate manner. They certainly did not seem adapted to treading on, even tentatively. There were twelve of them, all loans from the neighborhood, and heirlooms, every one, from knightly times—not so great an antiquity as it sounds, since the middle ages were but twenty years ago. But I should never have imagined so many retired knights or their heirs in so very retired a hamlet. The blades themselves bore evidence, however, of having been possessed and probably used for quite an indefinite time by their owners; and this touch of local domesticity imparted a certain sincerity to the act artistically convincing in itself.
The swords were then lashed in place. But as the divine archery was to precede the divine climb, and there were twelve sets of notches in the ladder and but twelve blades in all, those destined for its two lower rungs were lashed first upon the ​shooting-stand. The ladder measured fifteen feet in length, the rungs being about a Japanese foot, fifteen inches of our feet, apart; doubtless such distance being found in practice the most comfortable. After securely tying on the swords, blades up, the priests departed to dress for the function.
Meanwhile a capital pantomime was in progress upon the dancing-stage. A dance-hall is an invariable feature of every well-appointed Shintō temple, and is put in play on every possible occasion. The performers are sometimes girls, sometimes men, the former doing the serious dancing and the latter the jocose mimes. Both are always capital, and on this occasion I think the show outdid itself. Certainly it proved comic enough to keep the religious in roars. Three buffoons in fine pudding-faced masks engaged in turn in an altercation with an impressive gray-beard. The altercation was of an intermittent character owing to the necessity felt by the pudding-faced citizen of taking the audience into his confidence by elaborate asides of side-splitting simplicity, digressions which in no wise prevented the row's proper emotional increase, till at ​last it culminated in a fight which the graybeard, who did nothing but stalk round with a fine woodeny walk, invariably won. This was due quite simply to his god-like greatness, and not to the fact that his adversary went through the fight with his scabbard in lieu of his sword, having with elaborate inadvertence drawn the one for the other, a mistake at which he was subsequently proportionately surprised. All this, of course, detracted not a whit from the sanctity of the performance, which, like that of oratorios, came in with the historical characters the performers were supposed to represent.
In the mean time the countryside had been silently gathering. The ubiquitous little girl with the pick-a-back baby appeared first. Her familiars followed; the waifs growing in stature as they grew in numbers. I did not see them come; I only saw them there. And they made as modest a setting to the miracle as do the mountings to a Japanese painting. There was about them, indeed, a little of the ecstatic stupor of the cow, but the usual bovine stare of modern Japanese curiosity was here tempered by instinctive old-fashioned politeness.
​A Japanese street-crowd pleasingly lacks that brutality which distinguishes a western one; on the other hand, it has a stare of its own, an unobtrusively obtrusive stare, which knows no outlawing limit of age, and has a vacancy in it that almost bars offense. Apparently it is never outgrown. It alone would convict the race of a lack of self-consciousness and very nearly of a lack of any consciousness whatsoever. I love the Japanese urchin for all that, whether staring or not, but to me advanced age in the starer stales the infinite unvariety of his act. Orderly, however, and good-natured, a Japanese crowd is past praise, and one would think past policemen, which is not, I suppose, why the latter always turn up at such seasons. Here, however, I was much pleased to note their conspicuous absence. And still the concourse grew. When I first counted the folk they numbered one hundred and fifty. Shortly after, as near as I could estimate, there were two hundred and fifty people on the spot, of all ages, sizes, and conditions. The whole countryside had turned out, with or without the baby, according as it existed or not. Nobody's occupation seemed to ​interfere with his presence there in the least, from the village ragamuffin to the village belle. Charming girls I noticed in the act of commenting upon us, I trust favorably; for, as one of my friends puts it about his books, I would rather please the young girls than the old men.
But though we had not reckoned without our host, we had reckoned, it soon turned out, without our uninvited guest—the inevitable policeman. Just as we had taken chairs on the oratory platform, and had forgotten his existence, he turned up. He did so inopportunely for himself, for the first prayer had begun, and he had perforce to wait till it was over to put his official questions. The prayer was the first of the purification rites, and was offered before an improvised altar on the oratory. The altar was set out as the customary divine dinner-table and displayed the usual choice collection of indigestibles; fortunately always to be taken in a strictly immaterial manner. For every Shintō service is nothing but a divine dinner-party, with the god for sole guest. In this case the aboriginal banquet was offered to the gohei of O-ana-muchi-no-mikoto, the patron god of the occasion.
​The adjournment made the policeman's opportunity. Stiffly lifting his hat, as if the action were itself part of bureaucratic automatism, he challenged a lay brother on the oratory steps and proceeded to interview him on the cause of the crowd. Apparently the lay brother worsted him, for at the end of the colloquy he was so far humbled as simply to send me his card, with the modest request to know if I were a noble, as in that case he wished to salute me properly; to which I returned mine with the reply that I was not a noble, but an American, and therefore only the sixty-millionth part of a sovereign, and left him to figure out the respect due in so complicated a case.
The occasion, however, soon had a humanizing effect even upon his officialdom, so that he shortly grew quite tame and accepted at the hands of the lay brother a seat upon the platform beside us.
Meanwhile the priests were busy with prayers and finger-charms on the mats at the foot of the ladder, and when enough of them had been repeated there took place a solemn walk-round by the whole company about the staging.
​Mr. Konichi, the Sacred Bow, and Mr. Kobayashi, the Chief of God-Arts, then armed themselves with two beautiful bows beribboned at the end with a tangle of colored gohei of the five elemental colors, and proceeded, the one to mount by the secular ladder, which had not yet been removed, to the altar above, where he went through much pantomimic archery; the other to do like effigy-shooting below. The Chief of the God-Arts was specially effective. Stretching his bow at each corner of the square in turn, he made semblance to shoot at the demons, and accentuated his performance by quite unearthly grimaces. He knotted first his fingers and then his face in a truly startling manner. Nature had endowed him with a remarkably expressive physiognomy, which even in repose bordered perilously upon caricature. When this came to be further heightened by art, as enthusiastic performance of the rite demanded, the effect was extreme, quite capable of driving off devils, which was its object, and very nearly of driving off the bystanders, which was not. The pious saw in it the most realistic piety. What the children saw I will not pretend to ​guess, but I can conceive the nightmares they may have had in consequence.
When he had thus successfully frightened off the evil spirits without, he entered within the staging, and before the arrow-stand further scared the imps. As the exorcism drew to an end and we began once more to wonder how he was going to mount his hobby-horse, the big drum was brought by somebody and set up beside the stand. This solved the enigma and enabled the Chief of God-Arts, with the help of a pole, to rise carefully to the ends of the posts and to place first one foot and then the other lengthwise upon the blades, the forward edges coming out between his great and second toes. He then discarded the pole, as I have seen more secular performers do, to the catch of an assistant, and stood poised upon the knife-edges. Not content with standing upon them, he must needs tilt himself up and down as one does in testing the breaking power of a plank. This, of course, merely showed how much at home he felt upon the blades. Then with due deliberation he fitted an arrow into its notch, raised the bow, and drew it to his ​shoulder. In this effective pose he remained a long time, uttering what sounded uncommonly like an oath, but was in fact a song, sister to this:—
"The God of the Bow bends down from on high, And at twang of the string, lo! the demons fly."
The string, however, did not twang. For the exorcism continued, and the bow stayed bent. Indeed, the one was as long drawn out as the other, and the suspense was becoming positively painful, when at last he released the arrow into the air. The demons had evidently taken the hint, for the arrow buried itself harmlessly in the bushes.
With the assistance of the pole he then changed his pose a quarter way round, planting first one foot and then the other carefully across both blades. Then discarding the pole, he again went through the same pantomime as before, ending in a second release. His pose at this point was quite magnificent, and his intentness such that as with his eye he followed the arrow's flight, his whole audience instinctively did the same. We failed to see the shaft strike, and, turning back, behold! there it was still in his hand. ​Whether economy or the remains of original sin prompted this pious fraud, I know not, but he thus deceived us more than once, as he turned round quarter-wise upon his holy pedestal. Once he hit a tree, quite by accident, and the crowd applauded. After he had thus revolved several times, he called again for the pole and carefully descended from his pinnacle. I examined his soles and found them not only uncut, but barely lined; an unhurt condition which he shortly proceeded to demonstrate practically upon the ladder.
The divine shooting was no sooner over than the purification rites for the climbing of the ladder began; the usual thread of prayer knotted with finger-twists being gone through with upon the mats in front. Then, that there might be no mistake in the minds of the populace as to the genuineness of the miracle, the Chief of God-Arts ascended the secular ladder, which still leaned against the platform, and producing sheets of paper from his sleeve, cut them elaborately into little bits upon each blade in succession, and let the pieces flutter to the ground. When he had finished the secular ladder was removed.
​Nothing now led up to the goal of this acrobatic pilgrimage but the consecrated ladder of sword-blades. Ad astra per aspera with a vengeance. Nevertheless the Chief of God-Arts, calling once more upon the gods, prepared to mount. Girding up his loins that his feet might not catch in his tunic, and grasping parts of the upper blades with his hands, he planted one foot lengthwise along the lowest sword-edge, and then, drawing himself up to its level, placed the other similarly on the blade above. Then he rose in like manner to the third rung, and the fourth, and so on heavenward. He did this carefully but deliberately. Evidently it was merely a question of foot-placing with him.
The higher he got the less he seemed to think of his footing and the more of effect, till in mid-ascent he was minded to try a religious pas seul. Posing on one foot, he turned deftly to face the crowd, and with the appropriate swing kicked out with the other high into the air, flaunting his foot before the rapt concourse of people in the most approved prima assoluta manner. At this unexpected terpsichorean touch the ​populace burst into applause; and the Chief of God-Arts, turning triumphantly to his climb, continued boldly up till amid a general gasp of relief from the crowd below he topped the last rung and stepped out unscathed upon the platform.
Instantly he sank in prayer before the shrine. While he was at his devotions the second or secular ladder was brought round to another side of the scaffolding and tilted up against it, for what purpose did not at first appear. For, his prayer finished, the Chief of God-Arts turned again to the ladder of swords and exorcised it afresh. Then just as he was about to set foot on it for the descent, as we thought, he turned back and to our astonishment came quietly down the secular ladder instead. I was unavoidably reminded of the devout but inconsequent lady who told a friend that "She thought she should go to New York on Wednesday, D. V.," but, reflecting a moment, "that she should come back on Saturday anyway"
That his taking to the back-stairs for the descent was not due, however, to any inability on his part to come down by the front ones was shortly evident by his ​making soon after the ascent of the sword-blades nonchalantly a second time. The truth was, the miracle was supposed to end at the top, and the secular ladder to be as invisible a return to the original position as back-stairs generally.
As the Chief of God-Arts came down thus incognito by the back way, a second priest made ready to go up by the front one. His performance was largely a repetition of the first's; except that before starting the others weighted him with some boxes full of charms, which they strapped upon his back, to be consecrated by the ascent for subsequent distribution. What he carried made apparently no difference to him. He stepped up boldly and, after due suspense on the part of the populace, stepped out safely at the top.
The next to ascend was the head priest himself. This was a special compliment to us, since the head priest no longer habitually climbs, being well on in years. He got up, however, with impunity, save for a slight cut upon one palm. The third blade from the top did the business. We had noticed that the others had shied at it as if it were very thin ice, and when it came to ​the older skin of the head priest, he simply went through. This mishap conclusively showed, the priests stated, that for some cause the blade was impure. They were afterwards able to prove their prognostication quite right, for on subsequent investigation the blade was found to have recently killed a dog and not to have been properly purified since.
After the head priest all the others went up in turn, including the lay-brother; some of them several times. Planting the feet lengthwise was the favorite mode of procedure, but when more convenient the foot was put across the blade instead. To one man in particular it seemed to make small difference how he trod. He jumped jauntily up as if the blades were an every-day set of rungs and he in a hurry.
Inasmuch as imitation is the sincerest flattery, the priests should have been greatly pleased when at this point Asa, my houseboy, fired to emulation, suddenly pulled off his European boots and socks, rolled up his European trousers, and presented himself as candidate for the climb. To my eye the outlandishness of his dress, amid the archaic ​costume of the priests, gave him at once that unsuitable appearance to the deed so consecrated to the supposed countryman who volunteers at the circus. I should certainly have had my doubts about the genuineness of his inexperience had I not known him for my own "boy." The priests, however, received him most kindly, and after sprinkling him with a shower of sparks and properly finger-twisting over him, to purify him as much as possible,—and I doubt not he needed it,—showed him how to plant his feet on the rungs and started him up the ladder. To my surprise, and I think his own, he went as well as the best of them. We watched him with some vanity and more concern, and were suddenly electrified when, half way to the top, he turned, and, with a triumphant smile, made, he too, the approved coryphée kick high into the air. It brought down the house but not the boy, who continued on successfully till at last he stepped out triumphantly at the top. He was obliged to abbreviate the prayer, from not knowing it, and then he too came down the regulation back-stairs.
Exactly what happened after this is a ​mystery. Whether in his exaltation and hurry to get back to his place he forgot the projecting tips of the sword-blades, or whether in coming round the corner he collided with one of the priests, was not clear, for the first thing we knew, the boy was on the ground bleeding pretty freely from a gash in the top of his foot, while the priests did their best to stanch the blood. The point of one of the swords had ripped him as he passed. Nevertheless, he shortly after hobbled to the oratory veranda and then, while a proper bandage was being fetched, promptly fainted. When duly swathed he was dispatched to the head priest's house, where he underwent considerable exorcism, which, as he informed me later, did him a world of good. Evidently he possessed more latent piety than I had given him credit for.
How many more enthusiasts might have gone up the divine ladder had it not been for this regrettable diversion will never be known. For by tacit consent the episode closed the performance.
It by no means, however, ended the festivity. Several pleasing adjuncts to this had miraculously appeared, unperceived, during ​the performance of the miracle itself. A long line of booth-mats had suddenly sprouted mushroom-like out of the ground beyond the oratory and was now attempting to beguile the crowd by every species of toy and gimcrack, visibly connected or unconnected with the occasion. There were paper masks and clay foxes and baby bows and arrows and papier-maché swords. The last caught our fancy, as being suited for presentation to some of the urchins who were standing interestedly about, and who instantly put them to proper use by making us the objects of pantomimic attack as soon as ever our backs were turned.
Through this running fire we made our way safely to the head priest's house, from which, loaded with charms consecrated by the miracle, we were bundled into our jinrikisha and trundled regretfully toward home.
And now to explain the miracle:—
Doubtless credulity is the mother of miracles, but doubtless, also, with the far eastern family of them a pachydermatous sole step-fathers the process. For most of them are questions of cuticle. Of the three great Shintō rites: the Ordeal by Boiling Water; ​the Walking across Live Coals; and the Climbing upon Sword-blades, all depend upon it for easy performance. That the average Japanese sole is equal to the feat without preliminary purification is evident from the success of my boy, who simply picked up his skirts and walked.
But a certain other physical fact enters this last miracle not commonly appreciated, to the innocent manipulation of which by the priests the miracle is due; to wit, the immense difference in cutting power between a stationary and a moving blade. Everybody is aware that there is a difference, but few people realize how very great it is. If you press your finger upon the sharp edge of your knife, you will be surprised to find what a pressure you can put upon it with impunity; but if, ever so gently, you draw the knife-blade across the skin, it instantly sinks in.
The principle involved is the principle of the wedge. By drawing the blade along in the direction of its edge at the same time that you press down, you thin its angle to any desired tenuity. You have but to graduate the horizontal motion to the vertical ​force. As the angle of the wedge thus sharpens, the force necessary to make it enter is lessened indefinitely. We unwittingly apply this principle whenever we cut anything. And as this is our normal state, we forget that the blade is, statically used, not as cutting as we think.
Furthermore, it will be remembered that, as a rule, the priests took heed in placing their feet. Most of them were careful to minimize the impact.
These are some of the points that make miracle-working possible; but a good audience is equally necessary. A sympathetic populace renders Japan a very paradise of miracles. There is thus a twofold reason for a miracle's success; a thicker skin in the priests, and a thicker skull in the people. This double lack of penetration makes it easier both to do, and to be done by, a miracle than it would be elsewhere.
Pondering in this wise upon the great advantages for successful miracle-working possessed by priests of an artistic, pachydermatous people over those of a thin-skinned, scientific one, and half lamenting the lost grandeur of that pious past whose childish ​imaginings loomed so large and life-like, and vanish so sadly before our bull's-eyes of search, we were rolled through the broad quiet twilight of tillage toward the growing twinkle of town.
V.
To give a full account of Shintō miracles, we have now to consider quite a different class of them; the objective ones, pure and simple. The nomenclature is not mere matter of distinction. For the first kind are brought about by the unintentional but efficient subjective action of the miracle-performer himself; the latter take place independently of him. It is a distinction unimportant as regards the things, but of vital consequence as regards the people. For though it be open to the looker-on to doubt whether the water or the fire in the two ordeals above be rendered any the less hot by having parted with its spirit, it is not open to him to doubt the difference of perception of that heat in the man's normal and abnormal states of consciousness. This question is quaintly begged by believers, by stating that the god withdraws the spirit of ​the fire or permits it to return momentarily, according to the character of the tester. Skeptics settle the whole matter off-hand by denying the fact. But it is unscientific to call upon a noumenon unnecessarily, even of an annihilating character. Universal negation of a sense distinction implies universal charlatanry; and men are both too simple and too astute for that to be possible. Charlatans ape but they do not originate. A counterfeit implies a genuine, and a shammer something to sham.
To the objective miracles there is no psychic or divine side; they are due to undivined psychical principles merely. The Odojigokushiki, or "The Descent of the Thunder-God," is one of these. He descends into so plebeian a thing as a kettle of steaming rice, the rice being afterward offered in banquet to the temple deities. For to have rice taste like thunder is said to be peculiarly pleasing to the gods. The manner of working this miracle shown me was as follows:
Upon a small urn was placed a kettle and upon the kettle a rice steamer, the lid so set on as to leave a slit on one side. A young acolyte then appeared in the usual ​pilgrimage robe, his hair dank from the bath and his whole person twittering with cold, and, striking a spark from some flint and steel, proceeded to light the fire and then to encourage its combustion by the usual finger-twisting, scattering of salt, prayer, striking of sparks, and brandishing of the gohei-wand.
After the exorcism was well under way, the head priest came forward and sat down before the kettle in order to perfect the rite, the acolyte falling back to the part of mute. In keeping with the good man's extreme purity, his finishing touches were very simple. They consisted of a soundless whistle which he kept up through his pursed lips and of certain archaic finger-charms symbolic of pulling some very heavy substance toward him. Then, still mutely whistling, he sat perfectly still and watched.
He had not long to wait. Suddenly a roar rose out of the body of the kettle, and at almost the same instant the priest's own body began to sway back and forth. Steam followed the roar; then, after a couple of seconds, the roar ceased. We did not have to be told that it was the voice of the Thunder​God; and when it ceased we knew the god had gone.
Press of business the priest gave as excuse for the shortness of the divine visit. But indeed we were very fortunate, it seemed, in getting him to come at all, for often the deity does not deign to descend, even for a moment, being otherwise occupied. Besides, if every accessory be not perfectly pure he refuses to come on conscientious grounds.
The priest averred that at the moment of possession he always felt a violent punch in his stomach. He also said that the swaying of his body was to induce by symbolic traction the presence of the god, though it had seemed a trifle late for the purpose. Doubtless the god can be so constrained, but doubtless, also, the kettle is for something in the subsequent conversation. The slit in its lid has been suggested as capable of explaining the miracle, could it only talk as well as it can roar.
VI.
We now come to a miracle which might possibly be turned to practical account. It is perhaps the most wonderful of the objective ones. It consists in bringing down fire from ​heaven by simple incantation. The spark thus obtained may be used to light anything, the prehistoric two sticks preferably for purposes of warmth. At the time I was shown this miracle, I was not in need of caloric,—it was seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit in the shade,—so I was permitted to witness its working upon the comparatively vile body of my own freshly filled, unlighted pipe.
This is a very difficult miracle. Indeed, even when it succeeds it is scarcely an economical method of firing one's tobacco daydreams, so much time and trouble does it cost. But to epicureans who hunt new sensations and to whom the one meaning of the word "dear" is synonymous with the other, it may safely be recommended. For it is not likely as yet, if I may argue from my own experience, to be generally taken up.
To insure success in the city, the day should be sunshiny. Among the mountains even a cloudy day will do, so I am informed. I cannot speak confidently on this latter point, because my own investigations were confined to the ridge-pole of my house in town, and to the turf immediately below it.
​The priest who performed the miracle began by douching himself in the bathroom, from which, between the plumps of water, issued uncouth sounds, sputterings of formulæ and grunts as he finger-twisted. He emerged with nothing on but a blue pocket-handkerchief for loin-cloth, the small blue and white rag with which the Japanese dab themselves in lieu of towel. In this attire he sallied forth into the garden, and selecting the side of a hill as a propitious spot, squatted in the ordinary Japanese posture on its slope.
Cradling the pipe between his hands, he prayed over it exhaustively. Then he put it, tilted toward the sun, in front of him, and exorcised it very energetically by finger-charms, one of which strikingly resembled an imaginary burning-glass. There was, however, nothing between his fingers but air. He had spent fifteen minutes thus in digital contortions, when he suddenly stopped, distressed, and, complaining that the ants tickled him by promenading over his bare skin, said he thought he would go upon the roof. So a ladder was brought and tilted against the eaves, and up it he mounted to the tiles, and ​thence by easy slopes to the ridge-pole. In this conspicuous yet solitary position he continued the incantation. Part of the time I sat beside him on the roof; part of the time below upon the ground, looking intently up into heaven for the advent of the god.
Three quarters of an hour passed thus in momentary expectation of his descent, but nothing happened. At last, much chagrined, the priest informed us from the ridge-pole that it was of no use that day, and came down; but he signified his intention of repeating the rite till he succeeded, and, with this pious resolve, left.
True to his word, he was there again two days later, and remembering poignantly the disturbing ants, he decided to ascend at once to the ridge-pole. Before he did so, I examined him to a certain extent, although he had on only one of my own very smallest towels. Then two of us took post in the garden commanding the ridge-pole, and watched him for the better part of an hour from our vantage points. In another part of the garden had been set the lunch table, also commanding the ridge-pole, for the expected divine visit was sublimely ill-timed, and we ​hoped thus, if necessary, to be able to combine god and mammon. We put the evil hour off as long as possible, till at last nature could wait no longer, and we decided to sit down to our delayed repast, firmly purposing to keep one eye constantly on the exorcist. We did so religiously till we forgot him a moment for the vol-au-vent. Suddenly the man on the roof uttered a cry, went into incipient convulsions, and threw the pipe off into the garden, lighted. We instantly repented our forgetfulness of the god, and cursed our love of mammon. But too late, as the miracle had been wrought.
Exactly how the miracle was managed, I am unable to guess. The man certainly had scant means of concealment about his bare person. Naturally, however, we were not satisfied, and he professed himself willing to repeat the act. He tried the trick after this time and time again, but never succeeded more. So there this miracle remains, very much in the air. But I should say that it is said to be very commonly done; a more common thing, indeed, in Japan, than I can conceive burning-glasses to be.
To make the catalogue complete, I ought ​to mention what, spiritually viewed, are ornamental miracles—such as killing snakes and bringing them to life again, rooting burglars to the spot, arresting the attempts of assassins in the act, and defending one's self against discourteous dogs. But all such acts need not be dwelt upon at length, as they are very simple affairs to the truly good, and, like some scientific inventions, too expensive for general use.