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As a rule, though, I get these things pretty cheap. There are few people who care to buy them, and they have to be sold privately, you know: that gives me an advantage. See that Jizo in the corner, the big black fellow? What is it?" "Emmei-Jizo," I answered, "Jizo, the giver of long life. It must be very old."
When the body has been put into that strange square coffin which looks something like a wooden palanquin, each relative puts also into the coffin some of his or her hair or nail parings, symbolizing their blood. And six rin are also placed in the coffin, for the six Jizo who stand at the heads of the ways of the Six Shadowy Worlds. The funeral procession forms at the family residence.
Then first were made those icons of Jizo, which still smile upon the traveller from every roadside, and the images of Koshin, protector of highways, with his three symbolic Apes, and the figure of that Bato-Kwannon, who protects the horses of the peasant, with other figures in whose rude but impressive art suggestions of Indian origin are yet recognizable.
See! my sandals are of brass: yet I have worked and walked so much that they are quite worn out." This Nose of Jizo is one of the most dangerous points of the coast in time of surf, and the great terror of small ships returning from Oki. There is nearly always a heavy swell there, even in fair weather. Yet as we passed the ragged promontory I was surprised to see the water still as glass.
They seem brothers, so like in frame, in movement, in the timbre of their voices, as they intone the same song: No demo yama demo ko wa umiokeyo, Sen ryo kura yori ko ga takara. 'Whether brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters nothing: more than a treasure of one thousand ryo, a baby precious is. And Jizo the lover of children's ghosts, smiles across the silence.
Then the boom of the great bell of Tokoji the Zenshu temple, shakes over the town; then come melancholy echoes of drumming from the tiny little temple of Jizo in the street Zaimokucho, near my house, signalling the Buddhist hour of morning prayer. And finally the cries of the earliest itinerant venders begin 'Daikoyai! kabuya-kabu! the sellers of daikon and other strange vegetables.
There is not a cloud in the blue not even one of those beautiful white filamentary things, like ghosts of silken floss, which usually swim in this most ethereal of earthly skies even in the driest weather. A sudden shadow at the door. Akira, the young Buddhist student, stands at the threshold slipping his white feet out of his sandal-thongs preparatory to entering, and smiling like the god Jizo.
Yet more and more unreal the spectacle appears, with its silent smilings, with its silent bowings, as if obeisance to watchers invisible; and I find myself wondering whether, were I to utter but a whisper, all would not vanish for ever save the grey mouldering court and the desolate temple, and the broken statue of Jizo, smiling always the same mysterious smile I see upon the faces of the dancers.
She used often to visit the temple of Kencho-ji; and one very cold day that she went there, she thought that the image of Jizo looked like one suffering from cold; and she resolved to make a cap to keep the god's head warm such a cap as the people of the country wear in cold weather.
And every stone one lays upon the knees or at the feet of Jizo, with a prayer from the heart, helps some child-soul in the Sai-no-Kawara to perform its long penance. 'All little children, says the young Buddhist student who tells all this, with a smile as gentle as Jizo's own, 'must go to the Sai-no- Kawara when they die. And there they play with Jizo.
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