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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.
And this is the wasan'; and he reads me the hymn of Jizo the legend of the murmur of the little ghosts, the legend of the humming of the Sai-no-Kawara- rhythmically, like a song: 'Not of this world is the story of sorrow. The story of the Sai-no-Kawara, At the roots of the Mountain of Shide; Not of this world is the tale; yet 'tis most pitiful to hear.
Below this Sai-no-Kawara scene appears yet another shadow-world, a wilderness of bamboos! Only white-robed shapes of women appear in it. They are weeping; the fingers of all are bleeding. With finger-nails plucked out must they continue through centuries to pick the sharp-edged bamboo-grass. Fourth kakemono: Floating in glory, Dai-Nichi-Nyorai, Kwannon-Sama, Amida Buddha.
For together in the Sai-no-Kawara are assembled Children of tender age in multitude, Infants but two or three years old, Infants of four or five, infants of less than ten: In the Sai-no-Kawara are they gathered together. And the voice of their longing for their parents, The voice of their crying for their mothers and their fathers "Chichi koishi! haha koishi!"
Some time, somewhere, this day will come back to me at night, with its visions and sounds: the dusky cavern, and its grey hosts of stone climbing back into darkness, and the faint prints of little naked feet, and the weirdly smiling images, and the broken syllables of the waters inward-borne, multiplied by husky echoings, blending into one vast ghostly whispering, like the humming of the Sai-no-Kawara.
The Sai-no-Kawara is beneath us, below the ground. 'And Jizo has long sleeves to his robe; and they pull him by the sleeves in their play; and they pile up little stones before him to amuse themselves. And those stones you see heaped about the statues are put there by people for the sake of the little ones, most often by mothers of dead children who pray to Jizo.
'Now there is a wasan of Jizo, says Akira, taking from a shelf in the temple alcove some much-worn, blue-covered Japanese book. 'A wasan is what you would call a hymn or psalm. This book is two hundred years old: it is called Saino-Kawara-kuchi-zu-sami-no-den, which is, literally, "The Legend of the Humming of the Sai-no-Kawara."
But where are the men, and the old women? Truly, this population seems not of Kaka-ura, but rather of the Sai-no-Kawara. The boys look like little Jizo. During dinner, I amuse myself by poking pears and little pieces of radish through the holes in the shoji.
According to popular faith, my neighbor's darling is now playing with small ghostly stones in the Dry Bed of the River of Souls, wondering, perhaps, why they cast no shadows. The true poetry in the legend of the Sai-no-Kawara is the absolute naturalness of its principal idea, the phantom-continuation of that play which all little Japanese children play with stones.
'But why are those little stones piled about the statues? I ask. Well, it is because some say the child-ghosts must build little towers of stones for penance in the Sai-no-Kawara, which is the place to which all children after death must go.
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