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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
many forms; Jizo, of many names; Shaka, Yakushi, Amida, the Buddhas and their disciples. They were
very old; and their art was not all of Japan, nor of any one place or time: there were shapes from Korea,
China, India, - treasures brought over sea in the rich days of the early Buddhist missions. Some were
seated upon lotos-flowers, the lotos-flowers of the Apparitional Birth. Some rode leopards, tigers, lions,
or monsters mystical, - typifying lightning, typifying death. One, triple-headed and many-handed, sinister
and splendid, seemed moving through the gloom on a throne of gold, uplifted by a phalanx of elephants.
Fudo I saw, shrouded and shrined in fire, and Maya-Fujin, riding her celestial peacock; and strangely
mingling with these Buddhist visions, as in the anachronism of a Limbo, armored effigies of Daimyo and
images of the Chinese sages. There were huge forms of wrath, grasping thunderbolts, and rising to the
roof: the Deva-kings, like impersonations of hurricane power; the Ni-O, guardians of long-vanished
temple gates. Also there were forms voluptuously feminine: the light grace of the limbs folded within
their lotos-cups, the suppleness of the fingers numbering the numbers of the Good Law, were ideals
possibly inspired in some forgotten tune by the charm of an Indian dancing-girl. Shelved against the
naked brickwork above, I could perceive multitudes of lesser shapes: demon figures with eyes that
burned through the dark like the eyes of a black cat, and figures half man, half bird, winged and beaked
like eagles, - the Tengu of Japanese fancy.
"Well?" queried the curio dealer, with a chuckle of satisfaction at my evident surprise.
"It is a very great collection," I responded.
He clapped his hand on my shoulder, and exclaimed triumphantly in my ear, "Cost me fifty thousand
dollars."
But the images themselves told me how much more was their cost to forgotten piety, notwithstanding the
cheapness of artistic labor in the East. Also they told me of the dead millions whose pilgrim feet had
worn hollow the steps leading to their shrines, of the buried mothers who used to suspend little
baby-dresses before their altars, of the generations of children taught to murmur prayers to them, of the
countless sorrows and hopes confided to them. Ghosts of the worship of centuries had followed them into
exile; a thin, sweet odor of incense haunted the dusty place.
"What would you call that?" asked the voice of the curio dealer. "I've been told it's the best of the lot."
He pointed to a figure resting upon a triple golden lotos, - Avalokitesvara: she "who looketh down
above the sound of prayer."... Storms and hate give way to her name. Fire is quenched by her name.
Demons vanish at the sound of her name. By her name one may stand firm in the sky, like a sun....
The delicacy of the limbs, the tenderness of the smile, were dreams of the Indian paradise.
"It is a Kwannon," I made reply, "and very beautiful."
"Somebody will have to pay me a very beautiful price for it," he said, with a shrewd wink. "It cost me
enough! As a rule, though, I get these things pretty cheap. There are few people who care to buy them,
and they have to be sold privately, you know: that gives me an advantage. See that Jizo in the corner, -
the big black fellow? What is it?"
"Emmei-Jizo," I answered, - "Jizo, the giver of long life. It must be very old."
"Well," he said, again taking me by the shoulder, "the man from whom I got that piece was put in prison
for selling it to me."
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