Repetition
Westerners say that not to fear death is characteristic of savages.
Well, perhaps I am one of those ‘savages’.
Many times in my childhood, my parents admonished me
that since I was born in the house of a samurai,
I had to be able to perform seppuku, to slit my abdomen.
And I remember thinking that there would be physical agony
and that it would have to be endured.
Therefore, perhaps I am one of those so-called savages.
Yet I cannot accept the Westerners’ view as right.
Mōsō / Daydreams, Mori Ōgai, 1911
Ryūnosuke hated the summer. The red sun turned to white iron, pouring its light and heat over the thirsty earth, which stared back up into the enormous, cloudless sky with bloodshot eyes. Factory chimneys, walls, houses, rails and pavements; everything on the ground grinned and groaned in anguish. In his study, sweating and bitten, Ryūnosuke felt like a flying fish, lucklessly fallen onto the dusty deck of a dry-docked ship, to die tormented by the screams of cicadas, tortured by the probosces of mosquitoes.
Every year, though, Ryūnosuke did look forward to the summer opening of the Sumida River. He would stand pressed in the crowds along the railings of the Ryōgoku Bridge. He would see the barges and the boats, the hundreds of boats – great square-bottomed boats, fine barges, with their canvas awnings and their red and white hangings, all shimmering with bright-coloured lanterns, thousands of lanterns covering the river as far as his eyes could see – the river illuminated, the banks lit up, the hands of the crowds holding their lanterns aloft, their eyes looking heavenward, transfixed by the Roman candles and the myriad other fireworks fired from the boats into the sky, up to the stars, raining back down to earth, showering the world in millions of tiny, fading, dying sparks. But that year, that day, the kawabiraki festival was called off. The Emperor had fallen into a coma.
The temperatures continued to rise, but the city fell under a black blanket of dread silence. Daily notices on police boxes and reports in the newspapers informed the public in explicit detail of the Emperor’s suffering, yet ‘his godly countenance remained in every aspect unchanged’. Still, day and night, temples lit sacred fires to exorcize malign spirits, to change the air, to clean the air, while rags muffled the wheels of the trolley buses around the palace moat, where hushed crowds came in their thousands from near and far to kneel in prayer by the Nijūbashi bridge, prostrating themselves in the direction of the Imperial Palace.
Ryūnosuke listened to his sister’s tearful account of three young schoolgirls bowing for half an hour before the palace, praying for the recovery of the Emperor, to arrest the twilight, to halt the night. Ryūnosuke now wondered if he himself should go down to the palace gate. But then, after midnight, early on July 30, 1912, as a soft rain began to fall, Ryūnosuke heard the sharp cries of the newspaper boys. Ryūnosuke and his family bought and read the black-boarded extras, all of the black-boarded extras:
THE LAST SCENES AT THE PALACE
PEOPLE LIE PROSTRATE IN PRAYER
AS EMPEROR SLOWLY PASSES
REVELATION OF PEOPLE’S LOVE
PRAYERS GIVE WAY TO SOBS AND LAMENTATION
WHEN THE END IS KNOWN
If an artist had been before the Imperial Palace Monday night with a masterful brush, he could have painted an immortal picture of one of the most impressive and wonderful scenes in Japanese history. That scene, of a divine revelation of the national virtue and supreme sorrow of hearts broken by the lost love, is one that can never be forgotten. The history that will record the numerous and gigantic achievements and works of the late Emperor will not be complete without a series of pictures presenting the scene before the palace, with thousands of people praying for the recovery of their beloved Emperor, and at the end, lamenting over his death.
Midnight had tolled an hour before, but murmuring prayers still floated in the air in an unbroken chorus and with a regular cadence. The multitude that thronged before the palace before dusk remained as if riveted to the ground, while only a few withdrew. With the advance of night, breezes added a chill and seemed to fill the hearts of the ever-increasing mass of humanity with grief and fear.
In front of the iron railing, facing the room in which the Emperor lay dying, hundreds of men, women and children squatted or lay prostrate on the ground in profound prayer. The discomfort of their position was not thought of. Still hoping against hope, they prayed and prayed. In prayers of Buddhist and Shintō words, and in prayers according to the Christian faith, the old could recite all with flawless memory; the young and uneducated followed the words and lines of prayer with difficulty and uncertainty. All united in one great appeal to the mercy of Him who reigns over man and earth. ‘Oh, canst thou not hear the words of our bleeding hearts? Grant us our prayer!’
Behind those praying on the ground there stood crowds of more excited and less patient persons. They had read in the last official bulletin that the pulse was too weak to be felt, and that the Emperor was rapidly approaching his last moment. They were too agitated and too troubled to be quiet, even in prayer. They restlessly wandered about awaiting the next tidings. The multitude was hushed to silence in a momentary lull of a long-endured suffering. The nerves of the people were strung almost to the snapping point, and the ominous suspense appeared to forbode dreadful news.
And then came the report that His Majesty was dead.
Three minutes later, newspaper reporters were speeding away in kuruma; and soon the heart-breaking news was being spread through Tokyo, as fast as the presses could work; and was being flashed under seas to every part of the world. But no pen would be equal to expressing the grief of the sixty million subjects of Japan, in cottages and palaces alike.
The prayers
