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Lafcadio Hearn - Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, 1
vanishes from my sight for ever. So all things pass away.
Assuredly those impressions which longest haunt recollection are the most transitory: we remember
many more instants than minutes, more minutes than hours; and who remembers an entire day? The sum
of the remembered happiness of a lifetime is the creation of seconds. 'What is more fugitive than a smile?
yet when does the memory of a vanished smile expire? or the soft regret which that memory may evoke?
Regret for a single individual smile is something common to normal human nature; but regret for the
smile of a population, for a smile considered as an abstract quality, is certainly a rare sensation, and one
to be obtained, I fancy, only in this Orient land whose people smile for ever like their own gods of stone.
And this precious experience is already mine; I am regretting the smile of Kaka.
Simultaneously there comes the recollection of a strangely grim Buddhist legend. Once the Buddha
smiled; and by the wondrous radiance of that smile were countless worlds illuminated. But there came a
Voice, saying: 'It is not real! It cannot last!' And the light passed.
Chapter Ten At Mionoseki
Seki wa yoi toko, Asahi wo ukete; O-Yama arashiga Soyo-soyoto! (SONG OF MIONOSEKI.)
[Seki is a goodly place, facing the morning sun. There, from the holy mountains, the winds blow softly,
softly - soyosoyoto.]
1
THE God of Mionoseki hates eggs, hen's eggs. Likewise he hates hens and chickens, and abhors the
Cock above all living creatures. And in Mionoseki there are no cocks or hens or chickens or eggs. You
could not buy a hen's egg in that place even for twenty times its weight in gold.
And no boat or junk or steamer could be hired to convey to Mionoseki so much as the feather of a
chicken, much less an egg. Indeed, it is even held that if you have eaten eggs in the morning you must
not dare to visit Mionoseki until the following day. For the great deity of Mionoseki is the patron of
mariners and the ruler of storms; and woe unto the vessel which bears unto his shrine even the odour of
an egg.
Once the tiny steamer which runs daily from Matsue to Mionoseki encountered some unexpectedly
terrible weather on her outward journey, just after reaching the open sea. The crew insisted that
something displeasing to Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami must have been surreptitiously brought on board.
All the passengers were questioned in vain. Suddenly the captain discerned upon the stem of a little brass
pipe which one of the men was smoking, smoking in the face of death, like a true Japanese, the figure of
a crowing cock! Needless to say, that pipe was thrown overboard. Then the angry sea began to grow
calm; and the little vessel safely steamed into the holy port, and cast anchor before the great torii of the
shrine of the god!
2
Concerning the reason why the Cock is thus detested by the Great Deity of Mionoseki, and banished
from his domain, divers legends are told; but the substance of all of them is about as follows: As we read
in the Kojiki, Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami, Son of the Great Deity of Kitsuki, was wont to go to Cape
Miho, [1] 'to pursue birds and catch fish.' And for other reasons also he used to absent himself from home
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