Oshino

This is the interior of a Nanban temple. Ordinarily, it would still be an hour when sunlight struck the stained-glass windows. But today, under a rain-heavy sky of the plum-rain season, it is no different from dusk. In that dimness, only the Gothic-style pillars, their wooden surfaces faintly aglow, rise high and keep watch over the lectern. Farther back in the depths of the nave, a single votive lamp burns, its oil flame illuminating the statue of a saint standing within a niche. There is not a single worshipper left.

In that shadowy church, a red-haired foreign priest bows his head in prayer. He is perhaps forty-five or forty-six. He is a man with a narrow forehead, jutting cheekbones, and thick whiskers along his cheeks. The robe trailing across the floor seems to be the monkish garment called an abito. And sure enough, the rosary called a kontatsu is wrapped once around his wrist, its blue beads hanging faintly below.

The church is, of course, perfectly still. The priest does not stir for a long time.

Then a Japanese woman quietly enters.

She wears an old summer kimono marked with family crests and some sort of black sash; she looks like the wife of a samurai household. She is still in her thirties, perhaps. Yet at a glance she appears much older than her years. First of all, her complexion is strangely poor. Dark circles ring her eyes as well. Even so, her features as a whole may certainly be called beautiful. Indeed, because they are almost too regular, they seem rather severe.

Looking with frank curiosity at the holy-water basin and the prayer desk, the woman timidly makes her way toward the back of the church. There, before the darkened altar, a lone priest is kneeling. She seems slightly startled and stops short. But she must immediately realize that he is praying. She stands there silently, gazing at him.

The church remains as hushed as before. The priest does not move, and neither does the woman, not even a flicker of her brow. This goes on for quite some time.

At last the priest ends his prayer and rises from the floor. Before him stands a woman, clearly wanting to say something. It is not uncommon for people to come into a Nanban temple merely to look at the unfamiliar crucified Buddha. But this woman seems to have come for more than idle curiosity. Deliberately smiling, the priest addresses her in Japanese that is hardly more than broken speech.

"What may I do for you?"

"Yes, I have a small request to make."

The woman bows politely. Poorly dressed though she is, at least her hair has been properly arranged in a kogai topknot. The priest inclines his eyes in acknowledgment of her bow. His fingers toy with the blue-beaded kontatsu, twining and untwining around it.

"I am Shino, widow of Ichiban-ga-se Hanbei. The truth is that my son, whose name is Shinnosuke, is gravely ill..."

The woman pauses for a moment, then begins to explain her business fluently, almost as though reciting from a text. Shinnosuke is fifteen this year. Since around spring of this year, he has fallen sick with something no one can quite identify. He coughs, he has no appetite, and his fever runs high. Shino has done everything within her power: shown him to doctors, bought patent medicines, tried every kind of regimen she could think of. But none of it has had the slightest effect. Worse, he has gradually weakened. And on top of that, lately they have been in such straitened circumstances that she can no longer afford to have him treated as she wishes. She has heard that the priest of the Nanban temple practices a medicine that cures even leprosy. She begs him to save Shinnosuke's life as well. ...

"Will you come to see him? What do you say?"

Even as she speaks these words, she keeps her eyes fixed on the priest. In them there is no pleading look for pity, nor any sign of unbearable anxiety. There is only a quietness almost stubborn in its stillness.

"Very well. I will see him."

Stroking his chin beard, the priest nods thoughtfully. The woman has not come seeking the salvation of her soul. She has come seeking the salvation of the body. But that need not be blamed. The body is the house of the soul. If the house is soundly repaired, the master's illness too may more easily retreat. Fabian the catechist himself, after all, came to venerate the Cross for that very reason. Perhaps it is some such divine intention that has sent this woman here.

"Can your son come here?"

"I fear that would be rather difficult..."

"Then please guide me to your house."

For a single instant, joy flashes in the woman's eyes.

"Is that so? If you would do that, nothing could make me happier."

The priest feels a tender stirring. For in that one instant he has seen, upon the face of this woman who resembles a Noh mask, the unmistakable mother. The person standing before him is no longer merely a stern samurai wife. No, she is no longer even simply a Japanese woman. She has become the same mother as that "most merciful, most tender, most sweet Queen of Heaven" who once offered her beautiful breast to Christ in the manger. Throwing back his chest, the priest speaks to her more briskly now.

"Put your mind at ease. I understand the illness well enough. Your son's life is in my hands. At any rate, I shall do everything I can. And if human power should fail..."

The woman gently interrupts him.

"No. If only you will come once to visit him, then whatever happens afterward, I shall have no regret at all. After that, I can only entrust myself to the merciful protection of Kannon of Kiyomizudera."

Kannon! At that word, irritation instantly floods the priest's face. Fixing the ignorant woman with a sharp stare, he shakes his head and begins to admonish her.

"Take care. Kannon, Shaka, Hachiman, Tenjin, all those you people worship are idols of wood and stone. The true God, the true Deus, is one alone. Whether your son dies or lives depends on the will of Deus and nothing else. Idols know nothing of such matters. If your son is dear to you, stop praying to idols."

But the woman, lightly pressing the collar of her old summer robe against her chin, merely looks at the priest in surprise. It is not even clear whether she has understood his angry words. Leaning forward until he almost seems to bear down on her, thrusting out his whiskered face, the priest continues his exhortation with all his might.

"Believe in the true God. The true God is Jesus Christ alone, who was born in the land of Judea, in the village of Bethlehem. There is no god besides Him. If you think there is, that is the Devil, a fallen angel in disguise. Jesus hung even upon the Cross to save us. Look. Do you see that holy figure?"

Solemnly the priest stretches out his hand and points to the stained-glass window behind him. Lit by a pale patch of daylight, it rises in the dimness that fills the church: Christ in His Passion. Beneath the Cross, Mary and the disciples, distraught with grief, rise into view as well. Joining her hands in the Japanese manner, the woman quietly lifts her eyes toward the window.

"Is that the Southern Barbarian Buddha I have heard spoken of? If only my son's life may be saved, I would not mind serving that crucified Buddha all my days. Please offer your prayers that he may grant his protection."

Within the composure of her voice lies deep emotion. The priest, more triumphant than ever, tilts back his neck slightly and begins to speak still more eloquently.

"Jesus came down to earth to cleanse our sins and save our souls. Listen, then, to the hardships and sufferings of His holy life!"

Filled to the brim with sacred emotion, the priest walks to and fro as he rapidly tells the story of Christ's life: of the angel who came to announce the conception to the Virgin Mary, perfect in every virtue; of the birth in the stable; of the wise men from the East who followed the star that proclaimed His nativity and brought offerings of frankincense and myrrh; of the children slain by King Herod, who feared the coming of the Messiah; of Christ's baptism by John; of the Sermon on the Mount; of water changed into wine; of the blind whose eyes He opened; of the seven devils He drove from Mary Magdalene; of Lazarus raised from the dead; of His walking upon the water; of His entry into Jerusalem upon the back of an ass; of the sorrowful Last Supper; of His prayer in the garden of olives...

The priest's voice, like the word of God, resounds through the dim church. The woman, eyes shining, listens in silence.

"Just think of it. Jesus was crucified beside two thieves. The grief He felt then, the pain He suffered then, merely to imagine it now is enough to make our flesh tremble. And what is most awe-inspiring is His final cry from the Cross. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That means: My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? ..."

The priest breaks off involuntarily. The woman has gone deathly pale. Biting her lower lip, she stares fixedly at his face. Yet what flashes in her eyes is nothing sacred at all. It is only cold contempt, and a hatred sharp enough to pierce the bone. Dumbfounded, the priest can do nothing for some moments but blink like a mute.

"And this is what the true Lord God, the Southern Barbarian Buddha, is like?"

No longer displaying any of her former reserve, the woman lets the words fall like a finishing blow.

"My husband, Ichiban-ga-se Hanbei, was a masterless samurai of the Sasaki house. But never once did he show his back to an enemy. At the siege of Nagakoji Castle, so I am told, my husband had lost at gambling, and as a result had been stripped not only of his horse but even of his armor and helmet. Even so, when the day of battle came, he wrapped his bare body in a paper haori bearing in great letters the words Namu Amida Butsu, used a leafy bamboo branch in place of a battle standard, drew in his right hand a sword three shaku and five sun long, opened in his left a red-paper fan, and singing in a loud voice, 'Rather than steal another man's pageboy, I resolved to lose my head,' he cut down the troops of Shibata, famed among Lord Oda's own men as demons. And yet this so-called Lord God, even if he was nailed to a cross, raised a whining cry. What a pitiful coward he must have been. What merit can there be in a religion that worships such a coward? And if you too spring from the line of such a coward, then for the sake of the memorial tablet of my husband, who had no equal in the world, I cannot let you see my son's illness. Shinnosuke too is the son of Hanbei, famed for taking heads. Rather than drink the medicine of a coward, he would choose to cut open his belly. Had I known such a thing, I would never have come all this way. That alone is what pains me."

Swallowing her tears, the woman turns sharply away from the priest and hurries out of the church as if fleeing a poisonous wind, leaving the staring priest behind. ...

(March, 1923)