Folklore -- Japan; Japan -- Social life and customs
In fact, if you help a man in anything which has to do with a fault
of the body, he takes it very kindly, and sets about mending matters.
If any one helps another to rectify a fault of the heart, he has to
deal with a man in the dark, who flies in a rage, and does not care to
amend. How out of tune all this is! And yet there are men who are
bewildered up to this point. Nor is this a special and extraordinary
failing. This mistaken perception of the great and the small, of
colour and of substance, is common to us all--to you and to me.
Please give me your attention. The form strikes the eye; but the heart
strikes not the eye. Therefore, that the heart should be distorted and
turned awry causes no pain. This all results from the want of sound
judgment; and that is why we cannot afford to be careless.
The master of a certain house calls his servant Chokichi, who sits
dozing in the kitchen. "Here, Chokichi! The guests are all gone; come
and clear away the wine and fish in the back room."
Chokichi rubs his eyes, and with a sulky answer goes into the back
room, and, looking about him, sees all the nice things paraded on the
trays and in the bowls. It's wonderful how his drowsiness passes away:
no need for any one to hurry him now. His eyes glare with greed, as he
says, "Hullo! here's a lot of tempting things! There's only just one
help of that omelette left in the tray. What a hungry lot of guests!
What's this? It looks like fish rissoles;" and with this he picks out
one, and crams his mouth full; when, on one side, a mess of young
cuttlefish, in a Chinese[97] porcelain bowl, catches his eyes. There
the little beauties sit in a circle, like Buddhist priests in
religious meditation! "Oh, goodness! how nice!" and just as he is
dipping his finger and thumb in, he hears his master's footstep; and
knowing that he is doing wrong, he crams his prize into the pocket of
his sleeve, and stoops down to take away the wine-kettle and cups; and
as he does this, out tumble the cuttlefish from his sleeve. The master
sees it.
[Footnote 97: Curiosities, such as porcelain or enamel or carved jade
from China, are highly esteemed by the Japanese. A great quantity of
the porcelain of Japan is stamped with counterfeit Chinese marks of
the Ming dynasty.]
"What's that?"
Chokichi, pretending not to know what has happened, beats the mats,
and keeps on saying, "Come again the day before yesterday; come again
the day before yesterday."[98]
[Footnote 98: An incantation used to invite spiders, which are
considered unlucky by the superstitious, to come again at the Greek
Kalends.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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