Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

OF A MIRROR AND A BELL

Eight centuries ago, the priests of Mugenyama, in the province of
Tōtōmi (1), wanted a big bell for their temple; and they asked the
women of their parish to help them by contributing old bronze mirrors
for bell-metal.

[Even to-day, in the courts of certain Japanese temples, you may see
heaps of old bronze mirrors contributed for such a purpose. The largest
collection of this kind that I ever saw was in the court of a temple of
the Jōdo sect, at Hakata, in Kyūshū: the mirrors had been given for the
making of a bronze statue of Amida, thirty-three feet high.]

There was at that time a young woman, a farmer’s wife, living at
Mugenyama, who presented her mirror to the temple, to be used for
bell-metal. But afterwards she much regretted her mirror. She
remembered things that her mother had told her about it; and she
remembered that it had belonged, not only to her mother but to her
mother’s mother and grandmother; and she remembered some happy smiles
which it had reflected. Of course, if she could have offered the
priests a certain sum of money in place of the mirror, she could have
asked them to give back her heirloom. But she had not the money
necessary. Whenever she went to the temple, she saw her mirror lying in
the court-yard, behind a railing, among hundreds of other mirrors
heaped there together. She knew it by the _Shō-Chiku-Bai_ in relief on
the back of it,—those three fortunate emblems of Pine, Bamboo, and
Plumflower, which delighted her baby-eyes when her mother first showed
her the mirror. She longed for some chance to steal the mirror, and
hide it,—that she might thereafter treasure it always. But the chance
did not come; and she became very unhappy,—felt as if she had foolishly
given away a part of her life. She thought about the old saying that a
mirror is the Soul of a Woman—(a saying mystically expressed, by the
Chinese character for Soul, upon the backs of many bronze mirrors),—and
she feared that it was true in weirder ways than she had before
imagined. But she could not dare to speak of her pain to anybody.

Now, when all the mirrors contributed for the Mugenyama bell had been
sent to the foundry, the bell-founders discovered that there was one
mirror among them which would not melt. Again and again they tried to
melt it; but it resisted all their efforts. Evidently the woman who had
given that mirror to the temple must have regretted the giving. She had
not presented her offering with all her heart; and therefore her
selfish soul, remaining attached to the mirror, kept it hard and cold
in the midst of the furnace.

Of course everybody heard of the matter, and everybody soon knew whose
mirror it was that would not melt. And because of this public exposure
of her secret fault, the poor woman became very much ashamed and very
angry. And as she could not bear the shame, she drowned herself, after
having written a farewell letter containing these words:—

“When I am dead, it will not be difficult to melt the mirror and to
cast the bell. But, to the person who breaks that bell by ringing it,
great wealth will be given by the ghost of me.”

—You must know that the last wish or promise of anybody who dies in
anger, or performs suicide in anger, is generally supposed to possess a
supernatural force. After the dead woman’s mirror had been melted, and
the bell had been successfully cast, people remembered the words of
that letter. They felt sure that the spirit of the writer would give
wealth to the breaker of the bell; and, as soon as the bell had been
suspended in the court of the temple, they went in multitude to ring
it. With all their might and main they swung the ringing-beam; but the
bell proved to be a good bell, and it bravely withstood their assaults.
Nevertheless, the people were not easily discouraged. Day after day, at
all hours, they continued to ring the bell furiously,—caring nothing
whatever for the protests of the priests. So the ringing became an
affliction; and the priests could not endure it; and they got rid of
the bell by rolling it down the hill into a swamp. The swamp was deep,
and swallowed it up,—and that was the end of the bell. Only its legend
remains; and in that legend it is called the _Mugen-Kané_, or Bell of
Mugen.

Now there are queer old Japanese beliefs in the magical efficacy of a
certain mental operation implied, though not described, by the verb
_nazoraëru_. The word itself cannot be adequately rendered by any
English word; for it is used in relation to many kinds of mimetic
magic, as well as in relation to the performance of many religious acts
of faith. Common meanings of _nazoraëru_, according to dictionaries,
are “to imitate,” “to compare,” “to liken;” but the esoteric meaning is
_to substitute, in imagination, one object or action for another, so as
to bring about some magical or miraculous result_.

For example:—you cannot afford to build a Buddhist temple; but you can
easily lay a pebble before the image of the Buddha, with the same pious
feeling that would prompt you to build a temple if you were rich enough
to build one. The merit of so offering the pebble becomes equal, or
almost equal, to the merit of erecting a temple... You cannot read the
six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one volumes of the Buddhist
texts; but you can make a revolving library, containing them, turn
round, by pushing it like a windlass. And if you push with an earnest
wish that you could read the six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one
volumes, you will acquire the same merit as the reading of them would
enable you to gain... So much will perhaps suffice to explain the
religious meanings of _nazoraëru_.

The magical meanings could not all be explained without a great variety
of examples; but, for present purposes, the following will serve. If
you should make a little man of straw, for the same reason that Sister
Helen made a little man of wax,—and nail it, with nails not less than
five inches long, to some tree in a temple-grove at the Hour of the Ox
(2),—and if the person, imaginatively represented by that little straw
man, should die thereafter in atrocious agony,—that would illustrate
one signification of _nazoraëru_... Or, let us suppose that a robber
has entered your house during the night, and carried away your
valuables. If you can discover the footprints of that robber in your
garden, and then promptly burn a very large moxa on each of them, the
soles of the feet of the robber will become inflamed, and will allow
him no rest until he returns, of his own accord, to put himself at your
mercy. That is another kind of mimetic magic expressed by the term
_nazoraëru_. And a third kind is illustrated by various legends of the
Mugen-Kané.

After the bell had been rolled into the swamp, there was, of course, no
more chance of ringing it in such wise as to break it. But persons who
regretted this loss of opportunity would strike and break objects
imaginatively substituted for the bell,—thus hoping to please the
spirit of the owner of the mirror that had made so much trouble. One of
these persons was a woman called Umégaë,—famed in Japanese legend
because of her relation to Kajiwara Kagesue, a warrior of the Heiké
clan. While the pair were traveling together, Kajiwara one day found
himself in great straits for want of money; and Umégaë, remembering the
tradition of the Bell of Mugen, took a basin of bronze, and, mentally
representing it to be the bell, beat upon it until she broke it,—crying
out, at the same time, for three hundred pieces of gold. A guest of the
inn where the pair were stopping made inquiry as to the cause of the
banging and the crying, and, on learning the story of the trouble,
actually presented Umégaë with three hundred _ryō_ (3) in gold.
Afterwards a song was made about Umégaë’s basin of bronze; and that
song is sung by dancing girls even to this day:—

Umégaë no chōzubachi tataïté
O-kané ga déru naraba
Mina San mi-uké wo
Sōré tanomimasu

[“_If, by striking upon the wash-basin of Umégaë, I could make
honorable money come to me, then would I negotiate for the freedom of
all my girl-comrades._”]

After this happening, the fame of the Mugen-Kané became great; and many
people followed the example of Umégaë,—thereby hoping to emulate her
luck. Among these folk was a dissolute farmer who lived near Mugenyama,
on the bank of the Ōïgawa. Having wasted his substance in riotous
living, this farmer made for himself, out of the mud in his garden, a
clay-model of the Mugen-Kané; and he beat the clay-bell, and broke
it,—crying out the while for great wealth.

Then, out of the ground before him, rose up the figure of a white-robed
woman, with long loose-flowing hair, holding a covered jar. And the
woman said: “I have come to answer your fervent prayer as it deserves
to be answered. Take, therefore, this jar.” So saying, she put the jar
into his hands, and disappeared.

Into his house the happy man rushed, to tell his wife the good news. He
set down in front of her the covered jar,—which was heavy,—and they
opened it together. And they found that it was filled, up to the very
brim, with...

But no!—I really cannot tell you with what it was filled.