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Updated: May 17, 2025
It is buried with the dead; and should one die in a foreign land, or perish at sea, it is entombed in lieu of the body. Concerning them that go down into the sea in ships, and stay there, strange beliefs prevail on this far coast beliefs more primitive, assuredly, than the gentle faith which hangs white lanterns before the tombs. Some hold that the drowned never journey to the Meido.
Wherefore I still may pray you to pardon my past faults. And though I go to the Meido, never shall I forget your mercy to me great as the mountains and the sea. From under the shadow of the grasses I shall still try to recompense you to send back my gratitude to you and to your house. Again, with all my heart I pray you: do not be angry with me. 'Many more things I would like to write.
And now, alas! the influence of our relation in some previous birth having come upon us-and the promise we made each other in that former life to become wife and husband having been broken -even to-day I must travel to the Meido.
Many are the modes by which they make their way to the Meido, when tortured by that world-old sorrow about which Schopenhauer wrote so marvellous a theory. Their own theory is much simpler. None love life more than the Japanese; none fear death less.
In the Meido its dwelling is among those sunless mountains of Shide over which all souls must pass to reach the place of judgment.
About my effects I had no anxiety at all: thefts are never committed in the island. But that perpetual silent crowding about me became at last more than embarrassing. It was innocent, but it was weird. It made me feel like a ghost a new arrival in the Meido, surrounded by shapes without voice. There is very little privacy of any sort in Japanese life.
So through blackness to the Meido the white Shapes flit-the eternal procession of Souls in painted Buddhist dreams of the Underworld. My friend who writes for the San-in Shimbun, which to-morrow will print the whole sad story, tells me that compassionate folk have already decked the new-made graves with flowers and with sprays of shikimi.
"Poor little souls, your lives were brief indeed! "Too soon you were forced to make the weary journey to the Meido, "The long journey to the region of the dead! "Trust to me! I am your father and mother in the Meido, "Father of all children in the region of the dead." And he folds the skirt of his shining robe about them; So graciously takes he pity on the infants.
'Now, it is said that all who die, before going to the Meido, make one pilgrimage to the great temple of Zenkoji, which is in the country of Shinano, in Nagano-Ken. And they say that whenever the priest of that temple preaches, he sees the Souls gather there in the hondo to hear him, all with white wrappings about their heads. So Zenkoji might be the temple which is seen by those who swoon.
The same art of painting leaves, etc., with single strokes of the brush is still common in Japan even among the poorest class of decorators. 2 There is a Buddhist saying about the kadomatsu: Kadomatsu Meido no tabi no Ichi-ri-zuka.
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