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Updated: June 19, 2025
But the devout followers of Nichiren claim that after death their bodies will remain perfectly flexible; and the dead body of an uguisu, they affirm, likewise never stiffens, for this little bird is of their faith, and passes its life in singing praises unto the Sutra of the Lotus of the Good Law. I have already become a little too fond of my dwelling-place.
A wild uguisu perches on a cedar by the window, and in a burst of savage sweetness challenges my caged pet to a contest in song; and always though the golden air, from the green twilight of the mountain pines, there purls to me the plaintive, caressing, delicious call of the yamabato: Tete poppo, Kaka poppo Tete poppo, Kaka poppo, tete. No European dove has such a cry.
While people are awake and watchful, such creatures make themselves small; but when everybody is fast asleep, then they assume their true goblin shape, and become monstrous. The high wood of the hill behind the garden is full of bird life. There dwell wild uguisu, owls, wild doves, too many crows, and a queer bird that makes weird noises at night-long deep sounds of hoo, hoo.
His master, undaunted by the crude sentiment, continued to encourage the youth, until one day the music of his soul was awakened to respond to the sweet notes of the uguisu, and he wrote "Stands the warrior, mailed and strong, To hear the uguisu's song, Warbled sweet the trees among."
'Nippon-koku-chu- yaoyorozu-no-Kami-gami-sama! 'Ho ke-kyo! My uguisu is awake at last, and utters his morning prayer. You do not know what an uguisu is? An uguisu is a holy little bird that professes Buddhism. All uguisu have professed Buddhism from time immemorial; all uguisu preach alike to men the excellence of the divine Sutra. 'Ho ke-kyo!
And the places they most haunt are the loveliest high shadowy groves where the uguisu sings in green twilight, above some voiceless shrine with its lamps and its lions of stone so mossed as to seem things born of the soil like mushrooms. I found it difficult to understand why, out of every thousand foxes, nine hundred should have broken noses.
All that we see is enchanting, but there is a strange stillness in the groves; rarely does the song of a bird break the silence; indeed, I know but one warbler whose note has any music in it, the uguisu, by some enthusiasts called the Japanese nightingale at best, a king in the kingdom of the blind.
But there are uguisu and uguisu. There are uguisu to be had for one or two yen, but the finely trained, cage-bred singer may command not less than a hundred. It was at a little village temple that I first heard one curious belief about this delicate creature. In Japan, the coffin in which a corpse is borne to burial is totally unlike an Occidental coffin.
Wild uguisu also frequently sweeten my summer with their song, and sometimes come very near the house, being attracted, apparently, by the chant of my caged pet. The uguisu is very common in this province. It haunts all the woods and the sacred groves in the neighbourhood of the city, and I never made a journey in Izumo during the warm season without hearing its note from some shadowy place.
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