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Lafcadio Hearn - Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, 1
'Hotel, Cha, hotel!' I cry out again, for the way is long, and the sun sinking, - sinking in the softest
imaginable glow of topazine light. I have not seen Shaka (so the Japanese have transformed the name
Sakya-Muni); I have not looked upon the face of the Buddha. Perhaps I may be able to find his image
to-morrow, somewhere in this wilderness of wooden streets, or upon the summit of some yet unvisited
hill.
The sun is gone; the topaz-light is gone; and Cha stops to light his lantern of paper; and we hurry on
again, between two long lines of painted paper lanterns suspended before the shops: so closely set, so
level those lines are, that they seem two interminable strings of pearls of fire. And suddenly a sound -
solemn, profound, mighty - peals to my ears over the roofs of the town, the voice of the tsurigane, the
great temple-bell of Nogiyama.
All too short the day seemed. Yet my eyes have been so long dazzled by the great white light, and so
confused by the sorcery of that interminable maze of mysterious signs which made each street vista seem
a glimpse into some enormous grimoire, that they are now weary even of the soft glowing of all these
paper lanterns, likewise covered with characters that look like texts from a Book of Magic. And I feel at
last the coming of that drowsiness which always follows enchantment.
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'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'
A woman's voice ringing through the night, chanting in a tone of singular sweetness words of which each
syllable comes through my open window like a wavelet of flute-sound. My Japanese servant, who speaks
a little English. has told me what they mean, those words:
'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'
And always between these long, sweet calls I hear a plaintive whistle, one long note first, then two short
ones in another key. It is the whistle of the amma, the poor blind woman who earns her living by
shampooing the sick or the weary, and whose whistle warns pedestrians and drivers of vehicles to take
heed for her sake, as she cannot see. And she sings also that the weary and the sick may call her in.
'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'
The saddest melody, but the sweetest voice. Her cry signifies that for the sum of 'five hundred mon' she
will come and rub your weary body 'above and below,' and make the weariness or the pain go away. Five
hundred mon are the equivalent of five sen (Japanese cents); there are ten rin to a sen, and ten mon to one
rin. The strange sweetness of the voice is haunting, - makes me even wish to have some pains, that I
might pay five hundred mon to have them driven away.
I lie down to sleep, and I dream. I see Chinese texts - multitudinous, weird, mysterious - fleeing by me,
all in one direction; ideographs white and dark, upon signboards, upon paper screens, upon backs of
sandalled men. They seem to live, these ideographs, with conscious life; they are moving their parts,
moving with a movement as of insects, monstrously, like phasmidae. I am rolling always through low,
narrow, luminous streets in a phantom jinricksha, whose wheels make no sound. And always, always, I
see the huge white mushroom-shaped hat of Cha dancing up and down before me as he runs.
Chapter Two The Writing of Kobodaishi
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