Kiyohime Or The Power Of Love

: Japanese Fairy World

Quiet and shady was the spot in the midst of one of the loveliest valley

landscapes in the empire, near the banks of the Hidaka river, where stood

the tea-house kept by one Kojima. It was surrounded on all sides by

glorious mountains, ever robed with deep forests, silver-threaded with

flashing water-falls, to which the lovers of nature paid many a visit,

and in which poets were inspired to write stanzas in praise of the white

foam and the twinkling streamlets. Here the bonzes loved to muse and

meditate, and anon merry picnic parties spread their mats, looped their

canvas screens, and feasted out of nests of lacquered boxes, drinking the

amber sake from cups no larger nor thicker than an egg-shell, while the

sound of guitar and drum kept time to dance and song.



The garden of the tea-house was as lovely a piece of art as the florist's

cunning could produce. Those who emerged from the deep woods of the lofty

hill called the Dragon's Claw, could see in the tea-house garden a living

copy of the landscape before them. There were mimic mountains, (ten feet

high), and miniature hills veined by a tiny, path with dwarfed pine

groves, and tiny bamboo clumps, and a patch of grass for meadow, and a

valley just like the great gully of the mountains, only a thousand times

smaller, and but twenty feet long. So perfect was the imitation that even

the miniature irrigated rice-fields, each no larger than a

checker-board, were in full sprout. To make this little gem of nature in

art complete, there fell from over a rock at one end a lovely little

waterfall two feet high, which after an angry splash over the stones,

rolled on over an absurdly small beech, all white-sanded and pebbled,

threading its silver way beyond, until lost in fringes of lilies and

aquatic plants. In one broad space imitating a lake, was a lotus pond,

lined with iris, in which the fins of gold fish and silver carp flashed

in the sunbeams. Here and there the nose of a tortoise protruded, while

on a rugged rock sat an old grandfather surveying the scene with one or

two of his grand-children asleep on his shell and sunning themselves.



The fame of the tea-house, its excellent fare, and special delicacy of

its mountain trout, sugar-jelly and well-flavored rice-cakes, drew

hundreds of visitors, especially poetry-parties, and lovers of grand

scenery.



Just across the river, which was visible from the verandah of the

tea-house, stood the lofty firs that surrounded the temple of the Tendai

Buddhists. Hard by was the pagoda, which painted red peeped between the

trees. A long row of paper-windowed and tile-roofed dwellings to the

right made up the monastery, in which a snowy eye-browed but rosy-faced

old abbot and some twenty bonzes dwelt, all shaven-faced and

shaven-pated, in crape robes and straw sandals, their only food being

water and vegetables.



Not the least noticeable of the array of stone lanterns, and bronze

images with aureoles round their heads, and incense burners and holy

water tanks, and dragon spouts, was the belfry, which stood on a stone

platform. Under its roof hung the massive bronze bell ten feet high,

which, when struck with a suspended log like a trip-hammer, boomed

solemnly over the valley and flooded three leagues of space with the

melody which died away as sweetly as an infant falling in slumber. This

mighty bell was six inches thick and weighed several tons.



In describing the tea-house across the river, the story of its sweetest

charm, and of its garden the fairest flower must not be left untold.

Kiyo, the host's daughter, was a lovely maiden of but eighteen, as

graceful as the bamboo reed swaying in the breeze of a moonlit summer's

eve, and as pretty as the blossoms of the cherry-tree. Far and wide

floated the fame of Kiyo, like the fragrance of the white lilies of

Ibuki, when the wind sweeping down the mountain heights, comes

perfume-laden to the traveler.



As she busied herself about the garden, or as her white socks slipped

over the mat-laid floor, she was the picture of grace itself. When at

twilight, with her own hands, she lighted the gay lanterns that hung in

festoons along the eaves of the tea-house above the verandah, her bright

eyes sparkling, her red petticoats half visible through her

semi-transparent crape robe, she made many a young man's heart glow with

a strange new feeling, or burn with pangs of jealousy.



Among the priests that often passed by the tea-house on their way to the

monastery, were some who were young and handsome.



It was the rule of the monastery that none of the bonzes should drink

sake (wine) eat fish or meat, or even stop at the tea-houses to talk with

women. But one young bonze named "Lift-the-Kettle" (after a passage in

the Sanscrit classics) had rigidly kept the rules. Fish had never passed

his mouth; and as for sake, he did not know even its taste. He was very

studious and diligent. Every day he learned ten new Chinese characters.

He had already read several of the sacred sutras, had made a good

beginning in Sanskrit, knew the name of every idol in the temple of the

3,333 images in Kioto, had twice visited the sacred shrine of the

Capital, and had uttered the prayer "Namu mi[=o] ho ren ge ki[=o],"

("Glory be to the sacred lotus of the law"), counting it on his rosary,

five hundred thousand times. For sanctity and learning he had no peer

among the young neophytes of the bonzerie.



Alas for "Lift-the-Kettle!". One day, after returning from a visit to a

famous shrine in the Kuanto, (Eastern Japan), as he was passing the

tea-house, he caught sight of Kiyohime, (the "lady" or "princess" Kiyo),

and from that moment his pain of heart began. He returned to his bed of

mats, but not to sleep. For days he tried to stifle his passion, but his

heart only smouldered away like an incense-stick.



Before many days he made a pretext for again passing the house.

Hopelessly in love, without waiting many days he stopped and entered the

tea-house.



His call for refreshments was answered by Kiyohime herself!



As fire kindles fire, so priest and maiden were now consumed in one flame

of love. To shorten a long story, "Lift-the-Kettle" visited the inn

oftener and oftener, even stealing out at night to cross the river and

spend the silent hours with his love.



So passed several months, when suddenly a change come over the young

bonze. His conscience began to trouble him for breaking his vows. In the

terrible conflict between principle and passion, the soul of the priest

was tossed to and fro like the feathered seed-ball of a shuttlecock.



But conscience was the stronger, and won.



He resolved to drown his love and break off his connection with the girl.

To do it suddenly, would bring grief to her and a scandal both on her

family and the monastery. He must do it gradually to succeed at all.



Ah! how quickly does the sensitive love-plant know the finger-tip touch

of cooling passion! How quickly falls the silver column in the crystal

tube, at the first breath of the heart's chill even though the words on

the lip are warm! Kiyohime marked the ebbing tide of her lover's regard,

and then a terrible resolve of evil took possession of her soul. From

that time forth, she ceased to be a pure and innocent and gentle virgin.

Though still in maiden form and guise, she was at heart a fox, and as to

her nature she might as well have worn the bushy tail of the sly

deceiver. She resolved to win over her lover, by her importunities, and

failing in this, to destroy him by sorcery.



One night she sat up until two o'clock in the morning, and then, arrayed

only in a white robe, she went out to a secluded part of the mountain

where in a lonely shrine stood a hideous scowling image of Fudo, who

holds the sword of vengeance and sits clothed in fire. There she called

upon the god to change her lover's heart or else destroy him.



Thence, with her head shaking, and eyes glittering with anger like the

orbs of a serpent, she hastened to the shrine of Kampira, whose servants

are the long-nosed sprites, who have the power of magic and of teaching

sorcery. Standing in front of the portal she saw it hung with votive

tablets, locks of hair, teeth, various tokens of vows, pledges and marks

of sacrifice, which the devotees of the god had hung up. There, in the

cold night air she asked for the power of sorcery, that she might be able

at will to transform herself into the terrible ja,--the awful

dragon-serpent whose engine coils are able to crack bones, crush rocks,

melt iron or root up trees, and which are long enough to wind round a

mountain.



It would be too long to tell how this once pure and happy maiden, now

turned to an avenging demon went out nightly on the lonely mountains to

practice the arts of sorcery. The mountain-sprites were her teachers, and

she learned so diligently that the chief goblin at last told her she

would be able, without fail, to transform herself when she wished.



The dreadful moment was soon to come. The visits of the once lover-priest

gradually became fewer and fewer, and were no longer tender hours of

love, but were on his part formal interviews, while Kiyohime became more

importunate than ever. Tears and pleadings were alike useless, and

finally one night as he was taking leave, the bonze told the maid that he

had paid his last visit. Kiyohime then utterly forgetting all womanly

delicacy, became so urgent that the bonze tore himself away and fled

across the river. He had seen the terrible gleam in the maiden's eyes,

and now terribly frightened, hid himself under the great temple bell.



Forthwith Kiyohime, seeing the awful moment had come, pronounced the

spell of incantation taught her by the mountain spirit, and raised her

T-shaped wand. In a moment her fair head and lovely face, body, limbs and

feet lengthened out, disappeared, or became demon-like, and a

fire-darting, hissing-tongued serpent, with eyes like moons trailed over

the ground towards the temple, swam the river, and scenting out the track

of the fugitive, entered the belfry, cracking the supporting columns made

of whole tree-trunks into a mass of ruins, while the bell fell to the

earth with the cowering victim inside.



Then began the winding of the terrible coils round and round the metal,

as with her wand of sorcery in her hands, she mounted the bell. The

glistening scales, hard as iron, struck off sparks as the pressure

increased. Tighter and tighter they were drawn, till the heat of the

friction consumed the timbers and made the metal glow hot like fire.






Vain was the prayer of priest, or spell of rosary, as the bonzes

piteously besought great Buddha to destroy the demon. Hotter and hotter

grew the mass, until the ponderous metal melted down into a hissing pool

of scintillating molten bronze; and soon, man within and serpent without,

timber and tiles and ropes were nought but a few handfuls of white ashes.



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