HŌRAI

Blue vision of depth lost in height — sea and sky intermixing through luminous haze. The day is of spring, and the hour morning.

Only sky and sea — one azure enormity. In the foreground, ripples are catching a silvery light, and threads of foam are swirling. But a little further off no motion is visible, nor anything except color: dim warm blue water widening away to melt into blue air. Horizon, there is none: only distance soaring into space — infinite concavity hollowing before you, and hugely arching above you — the color deepening with the height. But far in the midway blue, there hangs a faint, faint vision of palace towers, with high roofs horned and curved like moons — some shadowing of splendor strange and old, illumined by a sunshine soft as memory.

What I have thus been trying to describe is a kakémono,⁵¹ that is to say, a Japanese painting on silk, suspended on the wall of my alcove and the name of it is “Shinkirō,” which means “mirage.” But the shapes of the mirage are unmistakable. Those are the glimmering portals of Hōrai the Blest;⁵² and those are the moony roofs of the palace of the Dragon King; and their style (though drawn by a Japanese brush of today) is the style of things Chinese, twenty-one hundred years ago. Thus, much is told of the place in the Chinese books of that time.

In Hōrai there is neither death nor pain; and there is no winter. The flowers in that place never fade, and the fruits never fail; and if a man tastes those fruits even once, he can never again feel thirst or hunger. In Hōrai grow the enchanted plants So-rin-shi, Riku-gō-aoi, and Ban-kon-tō, which heal all manner of sickness — and there also grows the magical grass, Yo-shin-shi, that revives the dead; and the magical grass is watered by a fairy water of which a single drink confers perpetual youth. The people of Hōrai eat their rice out of very, very small bowls; but the rice never diminishes within those bowls — however much of it be eaten — until the eater desires no more. And the people of Hōrai drink their wine out of very, very small cups; but no man can empty one of those cups — however stoutly he may drink — until the pleasant drowsiness of intoxication comes upon him.

All this and more is told in the legends of the time of the Shin dynasty; although, that the people who wrote down those legends ever saw Hōrai, even in a mirage, is not believable. For really, there are no enchanted fruits that leave the eater forever satisfied — nor any magical grass that revives the dead — nor any fountain of fairy water — nor any bowls that never lack rice, — nor any cups that never lack wine. It is not true that sorrow and death never enter Hōrai — neither is it true that there is not any winter. The winter in Hōrai is cold — the winds bite to the bone, and the heaping of snow on the roofs of the Dragon-King is monstrous.

Nevertheless, there are wonderful things in Hōrai; and the most wonderful of all has not been mentioned by any Chinese writer. I mean the atmosphere of Hōrai. It is an atmosphere unique to the place, and because of it, the sunshine in Hōrai is whiter than any other sunshine — a milky light that never dazzles — astonishingly clear, but very soft. This atmosphere is not of our human era: it is enormously old — so old that I feel afraid when I try to think how old it is — and it is not a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. It is not made of air at all — but of ghost — the substance of quintillions of quintillions of gener- ations of souls, blended into one immense translucency — souls of people who thought in ways never resembling our ways. If a mortal man inhales that atmosphere, he takes the thrilling of these spirits into his blood; and they change the sense within him — reshaping his notions of space and time — so that he can see only as they used to see, and feel only as they used to feel, and think only as they used to think. Soft as sleep are these changes of sense; and Hōrai, discerned across them, might thus be described:

Because in Hōrai there is no knowledge of great evil, the hearts of the people never grow old. And, by reason of being always young in heart, the people of Hōrai smile from birth until death — except when the Gods send sorrow among them; and faces are then veiled until the sorrow goes away. All folk in Hōrai love and trust each other, as if all were members of a single household — and the speech of the women is like birds singing, because their hearts are as light as the souls of birds — and the swaying of the sleeves of the maidens at play seems like the fluttering of wide, soft wings. In Hōrai nothing is hidden but grief, because there is no reason for shame — and nothing is locked away, because there could not be any theft — and by night as well as by day all doors remain unbarred, because there is no reason for fear. And because the people are fairies — though mortal — all things in Hōrai, except the palace of the Dragon King, are small and quaint and strange — and these fairy-folk really do eat their rice out of very, very small bowls, and drink their wine out of very, very small cups.

Much of this seeming would be due to the inhalation of that ghostly atmosphere — but not all. For the spell wrought by the dead is only the charm of an ideal, the glamour of an ancient hope; and something of that hope has found fulfillment in many hearts — in the simple beauty of unselfish lives — in the sweetness of women.

Evil winds from the West are blowing over Hōrai; and the magical atmosphere, alas, is shrinking away before them. It lingers now only in patches and bands — like those long bright bands of clouds that trail across the landscapes of Japanese painters. Under these shreds of the elfish vapor you still can find Hōrai — but not everywhere. Remember that Hōrai is also called “Shinkirō,” which means mirage — the Vision of the Intangible. And the Vision is fading — never again to appear except in pictures and poems and dreams. 

(From The Annotated Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn, Edited and Illustrated by Hayato Tokugawa, Copyright 2017 by Hayato Tokugawa and Shisei-Do Publications.)