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Lafcadio Hearn - Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, 1
tempest to heaven.
Then Kobodaishi asked the boy: 'Who are you?' And the boy made answer: 'I am he whom men worship
on the mountain Gotai; I am the Lord of Wisdom, - Monju Bosatsu!' And even as he spoke the boy
became changed; and his beauty became luminous like the beauty of gods; and his limbs became radiant,
shedding soft light about. And, smiling, he rose to heaven and vanished beyond the clouds.
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But Kobodaishi himself once forgot to put the ten beside the character O on the tablet which he painted
with the name of the Gate O-Te-mon of the Emperor's palace. And the Emperor at Kyoto having asked
him why he had not put the ten beside the character, Kobodaishi answered: 'I forgot; but I will put it on
now.' Then the Emperor bade ladders be brought; for the tablet was already in place, high above the gate.
But Kobodaishi, standing on the pavement before the gate, simply threw his brush at the tablet; and the
brush, so thrown, made the ten there most admirably, and fell back into his hand.
Kobodaishi also painted the tablet of the gate called Ko-kamon of the Emperor's palace at Kyoto. Now
there was a man, dwelling near that gate, whose name was Kino Momoye; and he ridiculed the characters
which Kobodaishi had made, and pointed to one of them, saying: 'Why, it looks like a swaggering
wrestler!' But the same night Momoye dreamed that a wrestler had come to his bedside and leaped upon
him, and was beating him with his fists. And, crying out with the pain of the blows, he awoke, and saw
the wrestler rise in air, and change into the written character he had laughed at, and go back to the tablet
over the gate.
And there was another writer, famed greatly for his skill, named Onomo Toku, who laughed at some
characters on the tablet of the Gate Shukaku- mon, written by Kobodaishi; and he said, pointing to the
character Shu: 'Verily shu looks like the character "rice".' And that night he dreamed that the character he
had mocked at became a man; and that the man fell upon him and beat him, and jumped up and down
upon his face many times - even as a kometsuki, a rice-cleaner, leaps up and down to move the hammers
that beat the rice - saying the while: 'Lo! I am the messenger of Kobodaishi!' And, waking, he found
himself bruised and bleeding as one that had been grievously trampled.
And long after Kobodaishi's death it was found that the names written by him on the two gates of the
Emperor's palace Bi-fuku-mon, the Gate of Beautiful Fortune; and Ko-ka-mon, the Gate of Excellent
Greatness - were well-nigh effaced by time. And the Emperor ordered a Dainagon [1], whose name was
Yukinari, to restore the tablets. But Yukinari was afraid to perform the command of the Emperor, by
reason of what had befallen other men; and, fearing the divine anger of Kobodaishi, he made offerings,
and prayed for some token of permission. And the same night, in a dream, Kobodaishi appeared to him,
smiling gently, and said: 'Do the work even as the Emperor desires, and have no fear.' So he restored the
tablets in the first month of the fourth year of Kwanko, as is recorded in the book, Hon-cho-bun-sui.
And all these things have been related to me by my friend Akira.
Chapter Three Jizo
1
I HAVE passed another day in wandering among the temples, both Shinto and Buddhist. I have seen
many curious things; but I have not yet seen the face of the Buddha.
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