Japanese Girls and Women, Alice Mabel Bacon [ebook reader library TXT] 📗

so great is the force of conservatism in this regard, so haunting the fear that any change may indicate a lack of respect for the dead, that reform advances slowly.

Individual instances occur in which some of the worst features of these customs are modified. A case in point is that of the late Mr. Fukuzawa, a man whose life was devoted to the advancement of his countrymen in modern ways, and who in his death continued his teaching. In his will he provided that his body was to be buried, without washing, in the clothing in which he died. This provision would seem in most countries to be mere eccentricity, but when one has seen or heard of the gruesome ceremony that follows immediately after death, and the burden of which falls, not on the old and hardened, but on the young and tender, suffering, in many cases, under the weight of a first and crushing affliction, one can see that only through such means as this can the burden ever be lifted from the shoulders of those who mourn. There are young and enlightened mothers in Japan to-day who have felt, in minds awakened to thought and action, the horrors of the system, and who will not allow their children to suffer for them what they have suffered in paying respect to their dead parents. Through this growing feeling and the unselfishness of maternal affection may come in time the release from these mournful ceremonies.

While the body remains in the house, a priest comes from time to time to offer prayers, longer or shorter according to the wealth of the family employing him; and when the funeral cortège sets out on its way to the cemetery, the priests in their professional robes form an imposing part of the spectacle. The day of the burial is selected with due respect to the calendar, for, though there may be little good luck about a funeral, there is a chance of extremely bad luck growing out of it unless every precaution is taken. Just before the procession starts, a religious ceremony is held at the house, which is attended by the friends of the deceased, and which is substantially the same as that performed at the cemetery. On the day of the burial, great bunches of natural flowers are sent to the dead, each bunch so large as to require the services of one man to carry it. Sometimes with the gift a man is sent to take part in the procession, but if the giver feels too poor to hire a man, this burden, too, falls upon the bereaved household, for etiquette requires that all flowers sent be borne to the grave by uniformed coolies, who march in the funeral train. Another favorite present at this time, among Buddhists, is a cage of living birds, to be borne to the grave and released thereon. This act of mercy is counted to the deceased for righteousness, and is believed to aid in rendering his next incarnation a happy one.

A funeral procession is an imposing spectacle, and, to the uninstructed foreigner, a cheerful one; for there is nothing sad or sombre in the white, or bright-colored, robes of the priests, the white, tinsel-decorated bier, the red and white flags borne aloft, the enormous bunches of gay-colored flowers;—the very mourners in white silk, and with faces apparently unmoved by grief, bring no thought of the object of the procession to the Western mind. It seems more like a bridal than a burial. But if you follow the cortège to the cemetery and there listen to the wailing of the wind instruments, and the droning of the priests as they perform the last rites, and watch the silent company that one by one go forward to bow before the coffin and place upon it a branch of sakaki or burn a bit of incense, the trappings of woe in Japan will impress themselves strongly upon your mind, and the gayly appareled funeral processions will seem to you ever afterward as mournful and hopeless a spectacle as you can find in any country.

The house of death remains a place of mourning for forty-nine days after the funeral. During this period the spirit of the deceased is supposed to be still inhabiting the house, and a tablet or shrine is set up in the death chamber before which food and flowers are renewed daily. Visitors are expected to make obeisance to the dead. At the end of this time, some acknowledgment must be sent to every friend who has sent anything to the house at the funeral. For a time after death has come into the family the relatives of the dead are regarded as ceremonially unclean. The period of defilement varies with the nearness of relationship. In the old days, no one thus defiled was allowed to go about his regular business or to mingle with other men; but busy modern Japan does not find it convenient to pause long in its work, so that government officials and school-children are now sent written papers excusing them for coming back to their tasks even while ceremonially unclean. Thus the old custom is passing away. In the first year after death, certain days are observed with special honors before the memorial tablet, and later, certain anniversaries of the death must be kept, until, at last, at the end of fifty or one hundred years, the personality of the spirit seems to become merged with that of the other ancestral spirits, and no offerings are made to it except at the general feasts of the dead.

With the coming in of the last month of the year begin the preparations for the great New Year's festival, and the housekeeper finds herself occupied through every moment of the brief days. A woman who is at the head of a large household has upon her hands in the month of December spring house-cleaning and preparations for Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving, and Easter, all at once. The work of getting the family wardrobe ready for the festival must begin very early in the month, for every man, woman, and child in the household must be provided with new clothes, and the thrifty housewife sends no sewing out. In the old days, it was ordained that the eighth day of the twelfth month should be a needle festival,—a day on which all women rest from their sewing and amuse themselves by indulging their own fancies instead of their husbands', as is their duty on other days. This day was supposed to mark the dividing line between the old year's and the new year's sewing, but, as a matter of fact, the forehanded woman will finish up the old and begin the new even earlier in the month, so as to have this part of her work well out of the way before the house-cleaning, which should be begun not later than the fifteenth.

This house-cleaning, even with the small amount of furniture found in a Japanese house, is an elaborate affair. Every box and closet and rubbish-hole in the house is turned out and put in order, the tatami are taken up and brushed and beaten, the woodwork from ceiling to floor is carefully washed, the plaster and paper walls flicked with the paper flapper that takes the place in Japan of our feather duster. All the quilts and clothing must be sunned and aired, the kakémonos and curios belonging to the family unpacked, carefully dusted, and put back into their wrappings and boxes, and the house and garden put into perfect repair. This work, if thoroughly done, takes about a week. When all is finished, even to the final purification by beating everything in the house with a fresh bamboo, games and festivities and soba are in order. In the old daimiō houses, where great numbers of men and women were employed, and where the women's quarters were in a distinct part of the house, it was considered a great joke to catch a man on the women's side any time between the close of the cleaning and the beginning of the new year. The intruder was promptly seized and shouldered by the women, who carried him about the house in triumph, finally returning him to his own quarters. If, by any chance, they could catch the chief steward, they sang as they carried him about:—