LITMIR.BIZ

      ONTAKÉ.

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      In the heart of Japan, withdrawn alike by distance and by height from the commonplaces of the every-day world, rises a mountain known as Ontaké or the Honorable Peak. It is a fine volcanic mass, sundered by deep valley-clefts from the great Hida-Shinshiu range, amidst which it stands dignifiedly aloof. Active once, it has been inactive now beyond the memory of man. Yet its form lets one divine what it must have been in its day. For upon its summit are the crumbling walls of eight successive craters, piled in parapet up into the sky.

      It is not dead; it slumbers. For on its western face a single solfatara sends heavenward long, slender filaments of vapor, faint breath of what now sleeps beneath; a volcano sunk in trance.

      Almost unknown to foreigners, it is well known to the Japanese. For it is perhaps the most sacred of Japan's many sacred peaks. Upon it, every summer, faith tells a rosary of ten thousand pilgrims.

      Some years ago I chanced to gaze from afar upon this holy mount; and, as the sweep of its sides drew my eye up to where the peak itself stood hidden in a nimbus of cloud, had meant some day to climb it. Partly for this vision, more because of the probable picturesqueness of the route, I found myself doing so with a friend in August, 1891. Beyond the general fact of its sanctity, nothing special was supposed to attach to the peak. That the mountain held a mystery was undreamed of.

      We had reached, after various vicissitudes, as prosaically as is possible in unprosaic Japan, a height of about nine thousand feet, when we suddenly came upon a manifestation as surprising as it was unsuspected. Regardless of us, the veil was thrown aside, and we gazed into the beyond. We stood face to face with the gods.

      The fathoming of this unexpected revelation resulted in the discovery of a world of esoteric practices as significant as they were widespread. By way of introduction to them, I cannot do more simply than to give my own. Set as the scene of it was upon the summit of that slumbering volcano sunk in trance itself, a presentation to the gods could hardly have been more dramatic.

      We had plodded four fifths way up the pilgrim path. We had already passed the first snow, and had reached the grotto-like hut at the eighth station—the paths up all high sacred mountains in Japan being pleasingly pointed by rest-houses; we were tarrying there a moment, counting our heartbeats, and wondering how much more of the mountain there might be to come, for thick cloud had cloaked all view on the ascent, when three young men, clad in full pilgrim white, entered the hut from below, and, deaf to the hut-keeper's importunities to stop, passed stolidly out at the upper end: the hut having been astutely contrived to inclose the path, that not even the most ascetic might escape temptation. The devout look of the trio struck our fancy. So, leaving some coppers for our tea and cakes, amid profuse acknowledgment from the hut-keeper, we passed out after them. We had not climbed above a score of rods when we overtook our young puritans lost in prayer before a shrine cut into the face of the cliff, in front of which stood two or three benches conspicuously out of place in such a spot. The three young men had already laid aside their hats, mats, and staffs, and disclosed the white fillets that bound their shocks of jet-black hair. We halted on general principles of curiosity, for we had no inkling of what was about to happen. They were simply the most pious young men we had yet met, and they interested us.

      The prayer, which seemed an ordinary one, soon came to an end; upon which we expected to see the trio pack up and be off again. But instead of this one of them, drawing from his sleeve a gohei-wand, and certain other implements of religion, seated himself upon one of the benches facing the shrine. At the same time another sat down on a second bench facing the first, clasped his hands before his breast, and closed his eyes. The third reverently took post near by.

      No sooner was the first seated than he launched into the most extraordinary performance I have ever beheld. With a spasmodic jerk, pointed by a violent guttural grunt, he suddenly tied his ten fingers into a knot, throwing his whole body and soul into the act. At the same time he began a monotonic chant. Gazing raptly at his digital knot, he prayed over it thus a moment; then, with a second grunt, he resolved it into a second one, and this into a third and a fourth and a fifth, stringing his contortions upon his chant with all the vehemence of a string of oaths. Startlingly uncouth as the action was, the compelling intentness and suppressed power with which the paroxysmal pantomime was done, was more so.

      His strange action was matched only by the strange inaction of his vis-á-vis. The man did not move a muscle; if anything, he grew momentarily more statuesque. And still the other's monotoned chant rolled on, startlingly emphasized by the contortion knots.

      At last the exorcist paused in his performance, and taking the gohei-wand from beside him on the bench, placed it between the other's hands, clenched one above the other. Then he resumed his incantation, the motionless one as motionless as ever. So it continued for some time, when all at once the hands holding the wand began to twitch convulsively; the twitching rapidly increased to a spasmodic throe which momentarily grew more violent till suddenly it broke forth into the full fury of a seemingly superhuman paroxysm. It was as if the wand shook the man, not the man it. It lashed the air maniacally here and there above his head, and then slowly settled to a semi-rigid

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