Wednesday, April 26, 2017

IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS


The following story was written by Lafcadio Hearn in 1894 or early in 1895 when he had moved from Kumamoto to Kobé, having taken a position with the Kobé Chronicle as a journalist. He had been unhappy to say the least in Kumamoto, primarily due to bad relationships with his colleagues and an overall dissatisfaction with Kumamoto conventions and customs, which he found to be far more severe and less good-natured than in Matsué or even Tokyō. That is not to say that he didn’t find much to dislike in Kobé as well; indeed, he spent much of his time there writing his book Kokoro, of which this tale as a part, a socio-political look at Meiji Japan, in which he frequently railed against the changes and disintegrations of Meiji, foreigners in general and their regard for Japan and the Japanese people in particular.
In reading this story, while editing Kokoro for a new, annotated and illustrated version, I found it evoking in me some strong emotions (stronger than many emotions that Hearn conjures in me as I read his books) and at once I could more fully understand the taint of the Meiji era, which Hearn had grown to detest so much. I felt strongly that this was a story well-worth sharing as an insight into the not-so-romantic side of Hearn’s Japan; so, I offer it to you now, with a couple of comments at its conclusion.

In the Twilight of the Gods


“Do you know anything about josses?”[1]
“Josses?”
“Yes, idols. Japanese idols — josses.”
“Something, “I answered, “but not very much.”
“Well, come and look at my collection, won’t you? I’ve been collecting josses for twenty years, and I’ve got some worth seeing. They’re not for sale though — except to the British Museum.”
I followed the curio dealer through the bric-a-brac of his shop, and across a paved yard into an unusually large “go-down.”[2] Like all go-downs it was dark: I could barely discern a stairway sloping through the gloom. He paused at the foot.
“You’ll be able to see better in a moment,” he said. “I had this place built expressly for them; but now it is scarcely big enough. They’re all in the second story. Go right up; only be careful — the steps are bad.”
I climbed, and reached a sort of twilight, under a very high roof, and found myself face to face with the gods.


In the dusk of the great go-down the spectacle was more than weird: it was apparitional. Arhats[3] and Buddhas[4] and Bohdisattvas,[5] and the shapes of a mythology older than they, filled all the shadowy space; not ranked by hierarchies, as in a temple, but mingled without order, as in a silent panic. Out of the wilderness of multiple heads and broken aureoles and hands uplifted in menace or in prayer — a shimmering confusion of dusty gold half lighted by cobwebbed air holes in the heavy walls — I could at first see little; then, as the dimness cleared, I began to distinguish personalities. I saw Kwannon,[6] of many forms; Jizō[7] of many names; Shaka,[8] Yakushi,[9] Amida,[10] the Buddhas and their disciples. They were very old; and their art was not 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 on lotus flowers — the lotus flowers of Apparitional Birth.[11] Some rode leopards, tigers, lions, or mystical monsters — typifying lightning, typifying death. One, triple-headed and many-handed, sinister and splendid, seemed moving through the gloom on a throne of gold, uplifted b a phalanx of elephants. Fudō[12] I saw, shrouded and shrined in fire, and Maya-Fujin,[13] riding her celestial peacock; and strangely mingling with these Buddhist visions, as in the anachronism of a Limbo, armored effigies of daimyō, and images of the Chinese sages. There were huge forms of wrath, grasping thunderbolts, and rising to the roof: the Deva Kings,[14] like impersonations of hurricane power; the Ni-O, [15] the guardians of long-vanished temple gates. Also there are forms voluptuously feminine: the light grace of the limbs folded within their lotus cups, the suppleness of the fingers numbering the numbers of the Good Law — ideals possibly inspired in some forgotten time 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[16] 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 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 on a triple golden lotus — 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 sand 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 replied, “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 joss in the corner — the big black fellow? What is it?”
“Emmei-Jizō,” I answered — Jizō, 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.”
Then he burst into a hearty laugh — whether at the recollection of his own cleverness in the transaction, or at the unfortunate simplicity of the person who had sold the statue contrary to the law, I could not decide.
“Afterwards,” he resumed, “they wanted to get it back again, and offered me more than I had given for it. But I held on. I don’t know everything about josses, but I do know what they are worth. There isn’t another idol like that in the whole country. The British Museum will be glad to get it.”
“When do you intend to offer the collection to the British Museum,” I presumed to ask.
“Well, I first want to get up a show,” he replied. “There’s money to be made by a show of josses in London. London people never saw anything like this in their lives. Then the church folks help that sort of show, if you manage them properly: it advertises the missions. ‘Heathen idols from Japan!’…How do you like the baby?”


I was looking at a small gold-colored image of a naked child, standing, one tiny hand pointing upward, and the other downward — representing the Buddha newly born.

Sparkling with light he came from the womb, as when the sun first rises in the east…Upright he took deliberately seven steps; and the prints of his feet on the ground remained burning as seven stars. And he spoke with clearest utterance, saying, “This birth is a Buddha birth. Rebirth is not for me. Only this last time I am born for the salvation of all on earth and in heaven.”

“That is what they call a Tanjō-Shaka,” I said. It looks like bronze.”
“Bronze it is,” he responded, tapping it with his knuckles to make the metal ring. “The bronze alone is worth more than the price I paid.”
 I looked at the four Devas whose heads almost touched the roof, and thought of the story of their apparition told in the Mahavagga.[17]

On a beautiful night the For Great Kings entered the holy grove, filling all the place with light; and having respectfully saluted the Blessed one, they stood in the four directions, like four great firebrands.

“How did you ever manage to get those big figures upstairs,” I asked.
“Oh, hauled them up! We’ve got a hatchway. The real trouble was getting them here by train. It was the first railroad trip they ever made…But look at these here: they will make the sensation of the show!”
I looked, and saw two small wooden images, about three feet high. “Why do you think they will make a sensation?” I inquired innocently.
“Don’t you see what they are? They date from the time of the persecutions. Japanese devils trampling on the cross!
They were small temple guardians only; but their feet rested on X-shaped supports.
“Did any person tell you these were devils trampling on the cross?” I made bold to ask.
“What else are they doing?” he answered evasively. “Look at the crosses under their feet.”
“But they are not devils,” I insisted; “and those cross-pieces were put under their feet simply to give equilibrium.”
He said nothing, but looked disappointed; and I felt a little sorry for him. Devils trampling on the cross, as a display line in some London poster announcing the arrival of “Josses from Japan,” might certainly have been relied on to catch the public eye.

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I suppose I expected more directly expressed antagonism or resentment from Hearn at the conclusion of this story; yet, his concluding sarcasm is probably sufficient — I can be angry for both of us. Perhaps he did express his antipathy is some editorial in the Kobé Chronicle or perhaps some letter. I’m searching and if I find such I thing I will share it. That having been said, my thoughts immediately went to three people that the unfeeling, dull-witted curio dealer typifies — robbers and raiders all. The first person that came to mind was William Anderson, F.R.C.S. (December 18, 1842 – October 27, 1900).
In 1873, the Meiji government established the Imperial Naval Medical College in Tokyō and chose Anderson, a surgeon and dermatologist, as Professor of Anatomy. He resided in the English colony in the city where he also served as medical officer to the British envoy in Japan from 1874 through 1879. It was during this time that he began to collect Japanese art. His first collection was destroyed in a fire but he was soon able to replace much of what had been lost. While in Japan, he was able to build a substantial collection of Japanese art, engravings, and etchings, as well as illustrated books on the history and development of Japanese art; purchases made largely from Samurai families who were experiencing poverty for the first time with the disestablishment of the samurai class, and crooked officials of the Meiji government. Subsequently, upon his return to England, he sold his collection to the British Museum, at that time considered the finest collection in Europe. Collect? I rather doubt that he did so with a mind towards a fairness in price or treatment of the seller; nor, any thought to the significance in religious, cultural, or artistic terms of what he was “collecting.” One can little doubt that he made a considerable profit, perhaps several times over.
The second was Avery Brundage (September 28, 1887 – May 8, 1975), the fifth president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), serving from 1952 to 1972. He was also a prodigious “collector” of Asian art, much of which can be found at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.
The roots of Brundidge’s interest in Asian art lie in a visit he made to an exhibition of Chinese art at the Royal Academy in London in 1936. He stated about the experience, “We [his first wife Elizabeth and himself] spent a week at the exhibition and I came away so enamored with Chinese art that I've been broke ever since.” That having been said, he did not actively begin “collecting” until he and his wife visited Japan for two weeks in April 1939 where they visited Yokohama, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara and Nikko. They followed-up their Japan trip with visits to Shanghai and Hong Kong, but due to the war between Japan and China, they were unable to explore China further.
On his return to the United States after the June 1939 IOC session in London, Brundage systematically set about becoming a major collector of Asian art. The unsettled conditions caused wealthy Chinese and Japanese to sell family heirlooms, and prices were depressed, making it an opportune moment to “collect.” He bought many books on Asian art, stating in an interview that a “major library is an indispensable tool.” After the US entered World War II, art stock owned by Japanese dealers in the United States was impounded; Brundage was able to purchase the best items at a premium. Dealers found him willing to spend money, but knowledgeable and a hard bargainer. Brundage rarely was fooled by forgeries, and was undeterred by the few he did buy, noting that in Asian art, fake pieces were often a thousand years old. In a 1948 article on Brundage for Life, note was made that “his collection is regarded as one of the largest and most important in private hands in this country.”
Brundage engaged the French scholar René-Yvon Lefebvre d'Argencé, then teaching at the University of California, as full-time curator of his collection and advisor on acquisitions. The two men made a deal—no piece would be purchased unless both men agreed. They built a collection of jade which ranged from the Neolithic period to the modern era; and hundreds of Chinese, Japanese and Korean bronzes, mostly Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The painter whom Brundage admired the most was Huizong, 12th-century Chinese emperor of the Song dynasty; but he never was able to obtain any of his work.
Brundage several times bought pieces smuggled out of their lands of origin on the premise that they would be to restore here. Many would testify that when Brundage sold a piece, it was most likely because he no longer favored it artistically, rather than to realize a profit: the subject of great debate in view of a 1954 financial statement prepared for Brundage listed the value of his collection as more than $1 million. In 1960, Robert Shaplen, in his article on Brundage for The New Yorker, noted that Brundage, during his travels as IOC president, always seemed to find time to visit art dealers, and stated that the collection was actually valued at $15 million.
By the late 1950s, Brundage was increasingly concerned about what to do with his collection. Accounts say that his homes in Chicago and California were so overwhelmed with art that priceless artifacts were kept in shoeboxes under beds. In 1959, Brundage agreed to give part of his collection to the City of San Francisco. The following year city voters passed a bond issue of $2,725,000 to house the donation. The result was the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, which opened in 1966 in Golden Gate Park, initially sharing space with the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum before moving to its own facility near the Civic Center in 2003. Brundage made another major donation in 1969 (despite a fire which destroyed many pieces at his California home near Santa Barbara in 1964), and left the remainder of his collection to the museum in his will. Today, the museum has 7,700 pieces from Brundage among the 17,000-plus objects which make up its collection.
And the third “raider” was William Randolph Hearst whose appetite for art as well as his megalomania and greed are legendary. Hearst amassed a considerable collection of Asian art which one can be certain was not acquired with any sense of altruism. Perhaps it was karma, but beginning in 1937, Hearst began selling some of his art collection to help relieve the burden he had suffered from the depression. The first year he sold 11 million dollars’ worth. In 1941 he put an additional 20,000 items (from all over the world) up for sale.
Be that as it may, when viewing museum collections of Asian art, one has to approach such assemblages with a thought (at least) to the prices paid and not paid in acquisition.


 Photos courtesy of Gabi Greve or from my own collection.

© Copyright 2017 by Hayato Tokugawa. All rights reserved.



[1] The term “joss” is Chinese Pidgin English, derived from the Portuguese “deos” (c. 1705) referring to a Chinese deity worshipped in the form of an idol or a Chinese house idol or cult image. Usage would appear to have been more common to Westerners in Asia than Asians, who applied the term not just to Chinese Taoist or Buddhist images but eventually was applied by uneducated or otherwise unsympathetic Westerners to any non-Christian statue found in East Asia and Japan. Later the term made its way even to California along with Cantonese immigrants, where it was applied to Chinese temples, such as the Temple among the Trees Beneath the Clouds (雲林廟) in Weaverville, where it is more commonly known now as the Weaverville Joss House State Historic Park, and various locations in San Francisco's Chinatown.
[2] Author’s Footnote: A name given to fireproof storehouses in the open ports of the Far East. The word is derived from the Malay gûdong.
[3] (In Buddhism and Jainism) someone who has attained the goal of the religious life; people far advanced along the path of Enlightenment, but who may not have reached full Buddhahood.
[4] The word ‘Buddha’ is a title, which means “one who is awake” — in the sense of having “woken up to reality.”
[5] Bodhisattva is a word from Sanskrit meaning “one enlightened in essence.” The word refers to a person who has achieved great moral and spiritual wisdom and is a potential Buddha; especially, such a person who has rejected Nirvâna in order to assist suffering mankind.
[6] Kwannon (観音) or Kannon, is a bodhisattva; one who has achieved enlightenment but postpones Buddhahood until everyone can be saved. In Japan’s Pure Land Buddhism, whose principal deity is Amida, Kwannon, who personifies compassion and mercy, is the more important of Amida’s two main attendants; the other is Seishi Bosatsu.
[7] Jizō is one of the most beloved deities of all Japanese Buddhism, who works to ease the suffering and shorten the sentence of those serving time in Purgatory, to deliver the faithful into Amida Buddha’s western paradise, and to answer the prayers of the living for health, success, children, and all manner of petitions. In modern Japan, Jizō is a friend to all, never frightening, even to children, and his many manifestations, often cute, even cartoon-like, incorporate Taoist, Buddhist, and Shintō components.
[8] In Japan the historical Buddha is called Shaka Nyorai (釈迦如来), or Shakyamuni Tathāgata (Shaka in the common shortened form).
[9] Yakushi Nyorai or the Medicine/Healing Buddha.
[10] Amida or Amida Butsu is the central figure of Amida Buddhism or Pure Land Buddhism (浄土教, Jōdokyō).
[11] Apparitional birth is a complex concept of Buddhism, in which sentient beings start up into existence, in an instant, from nothingness: spontaneous. Such a birth applies to beings who come into existence fully grown and complete. To some, this implies that there is always someone in existence previous to the appearance of the new existence, by whom the new existence is caused. In Shinto, the "original gods" are born without parents by apparitional birth.
[12] In Indian Buddhism, Ācala (known as Fudō in Japanese Buddhism) is the best known of the Five Wisdom Kings or Five Guardian Kings of the Womb Realm.  His name is derived from the Sanskrit word termācala, meaning “immovable.”  Fudō is regarded as the destroyer of delusion and the protector of Buddhism; unmoved by carnal temptations, whose role is to aid all beings by presenting to them the teachings of Buddha; thus, leading to self-control.  In Japanese Buddhist tradition, he is regarded as one of the Thirteen Buddhas, typically portrayed holding a sword and a lariat, clad in rags, with one fang pointing up and another pointing down, with a braid on one side of his head.
[13] The mother of Shaka Nyorai.
[14] The Four Heavenly Kings, four Buddhist gods, each of whom watches over one cardinal direction of the world.
[15] Niō (仁王) or Kongōrikishi (金剛力士) are two wrath-filled and muscular guardians of the Buddha standing today at the entrance of many Buddhist temples in East Asian Buddhism in the form of frightening wrestler-like statues. They are dharmapala manifestations of the bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi, the oldest and most powerful of the Mahayana Buddhist pantheon. According to Japanese tradition, they travelled with Gautama Buddha to protect him and there are references to this in the Pāli Canon as well as the Ambaṭṭha Sutta. Within the generally pacifist tradition of Buddhism, stories of dharmapalas justified the use of physical force to protect cherished values and beliefs against evil. The Niō are also seen as a manifestation of Mahasthamaprapta, the bodhisattva of power that flanks Amitābha in Pure Land Buddhism and as Vajrasattva in Tibetan Buddhism.
[16] In Japanese popular mythology and art, the tengu are commonly represented either as winged men with beak-shaped noses, or as birds of prey. There are different kinds of tengu; but all are supposed to be mountain-haunting spirits, capable of assuming many forms, and occasionally appearing as crows, vultures, or eagles. Buddhism appears to class the tengu among the Mârakâyikas.
[17] Mahavagga. A section of the Vinaya Pitaka, divided into chapters called Khandhakas. The introductory chapters give an account of the incidents immediately following the Buddha’s enlightenment, leading up to the foundation of the Order of the Sangha. It then gives various rules for members of the Sangha, together with the circumstances which led to the formulation of each rule.

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