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Updated: June 12, 2025
Devils trampling on the Cross, as a display line in some London poster announcing the arrival of "josses from Japan," might certainly have been relied on to catch the public eye. "This is more wonderful," I said, pointing to a beautiful group, Maya with the infant Buddha issuing from her side, according to tradition. Painlessly the Bodhisattva was born from her right side.
We say the needle points to the north; they hold that the attraction is to the south, and therefore colour that end of the needle red, a hue that appears to have a mysterious efficacy in their eyes. I have already told how the Josses were wrapped in red scarves, and bits of red cloth were tied on the rudder, cable, mast, and other principal parts of the vessel, as safeguards against danger.
'I've heerd me good ol' cast-iron gods or josses abused, I says, 'an' I've been packed full iv canned goods, an' th' Peking Lightnin' Express is r-runnin' sthraight through th' lot where th' bones iv me ancesthors lies, I says. 'I've shtud it all, I says, 'but whin ye come here to bounce me off iv me own primises, I says, 'I'll have to take th' leg iv th' chair to ye, I says.
It was the eighth day of the fourth moon. "That's bronze, too," he remarked, tapping it. "Bronze josses are getting rare. We used to buy them up and sell them for old metal. Wish I'd kept some of them! You ought to have seen the bronzes, in those days, coming in from the temples, bells and vases and josses! That was the time we tried to buy the Daibutsu at Kamakura." "For old bronze?" I queried.
At the office he reported "no story." Before going home he wrote a note to the city desk. Impenetrability of expression is doubtless a valuable attribute to a joss. Otherwise so many josses would not display it. Upon the stony and placid visage of Mr.
Wulf rode out with the steward inspecting the houses and farms, learning what there was to be learned of the rude processes of agriculture, investigating the complaints of the depredations committed by errant herds of swine or by neighbours' cattle and sheep, seeing what was required in the repairs of farmhouses, and learning from Egbert to discriminate between those who were unable to pay their dues owing to misfortune, illness, or murrain among the animals, and those whose Josses were due to their own sloth or carelessness.
The ceaseless motion, with the click, click, click of the wheels our sweet lullaby apparently this had become was wanting; and then the telegrams from home, which bade us Godspeed, the warm, balmy air of Italy, when we had left winter behind all this drove sleep away; and when drowsiness came, what apparitions of Japanese, Chinese, Indians, elephants, camels, josses! passed through our brain in endless procession.
Once more he felt the light touch of his mother's hand guiding his little steps to the place of morning worship, before the household shrine, before the tablets of the ancestors; and the lips of the man murmured again, with sudden new-found meaning, the simple prayer of the child. "Do you know anything about josses?" "Josses?" "Yes; idols, Japanese idols, josses."
"Well, I first want to get up a show," he replied. "There's money to be made by a show of josses in London. London people never saw anything like this in their lives. Then the church folks help that sort of a show, if you manage them properly: it advertises the missions. 'Heathen idols from Japan!... How do you like the baby?"
"Afterwards," he resumed, "they wanted to get it back again, and offered me more, than I had given for it. But I held on. I don't know everything about josses, but I do know what they are worth. There isn't another idol like that in the whole country. The British Museum will be glad to get it." "When do you intend to offer the collection to the British Museum?" I presumed to ask.
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