Ancient Mysteries no. 17, October 1980  (continuation of Journal of Geomancy)

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STUMBLING ON CATS’ TALES IN JAPAN

by John Billingsley.

Before ever people assumed the Earth, goddesses and gods lived, coupled, and created all things in wanton profusion.  In what we know here as the Far East, Izanagi and Izanami begat the archipelago of Japan, and followed that up with an assortment of spiritual identities.  The last of these, the God of Fire, killed Izanami, in delivery, but her consort followed her to the underworld to petition her return.  His adventures availed nothing of the desired end; but purifying himself in a stream in S.W. Japan on his return, he was witness to the continuance of creative activity.  From each article of his discarded clothing sprang a fresh deity; likewise from each part of his body.  From the left eye emerged Amaterasu, Sun Goddess; from the right, the Moon-God; while from his nose came Susano-o the Sea God, a.k.a. the Impetuous Male Deity.  Between these three Izanagi divided the inheritance of the universe.  The Moon God is the quiet one of the family – little is heard of him – and Amaterasu proceeds industriously in her course, but doesn’t get on too well with her boisterous and violent brother Susano-o.  After a show of unacceptable behaviour on his part, Amaterasu retires to a cave in Kyushu, leaving the world in darkness, and caring little.  Her return is engineered through guile and less-than-gentle persuasion by the minor deities, but nonetheless she resumes her place in the order of things until such time as she bestows the sovereignty of Japan upon the child of a chosen deity.  The child descends to Earth, and alights upon a mountain peak in Kyushu; and here I leave the sketch of Japanese mythology to stay with the mountains in that part of the country.  {39}

Kyushu is the main island of SW Japan, and the cradle of the Japanese race.  From here they conquered the desirable parts of the volcanic island chain, and laid the foundations of a culture that is now in decline, along with most traditional (and patriarchal) cultures of the world.  Some of the oldest and most sacred sites of the nation are to be found in Kyushu (showing a cultural derivation from Korea, as is general in ancient Japanese sites – most embarrassing for Japanese racists, who despise Koreans!); and also, from a period long long before – perhaps when the deities played together – some of the strongest landscapes.  Mount Aso, for instance; a double-conide volcano, whose outer basin measures 16 x 23 km in diameter, and is probably the largest volcanic crater in the world.  Within this basin rise a series of smaller peaks, one (Mt Nakadaki) still resolutely active, and a savage awesome sight it is.  No place, in truth, for human or beast, a fact that was adequately perceived by those folk who penetrated the walls of the outer basin.  The better soil supported their agriculture while the poorer land made fine grazing, and that really was their reason for staying there so close to the smouldering hole they instantly termed a ‘hell’; much worse than the hot springs and mud-pools, also called ‘hells’, scattered elsewhere on Kyushu, island of ancient deities. 

In 726 CE, across the mountains and down the sheer rim of the outer crater, came a melange of Buddhist monks seeking their place in the seclusion of the hills.  After much climbing through narrow claustrophobic valleys, they came unexpectedly on this wide green expanse inhabited by people who spoke fearfully of ‘hell’ and pointed to the place where it lay, where they would never set foot.  To the monks, we may say, it was a heaven-sent opportunity to endeavour to save the people from whatever they saw as hell.  For their part, {40} they went to that awful sulphurous void, and prayed, and in time people went with them once a year to solicit their safety.  A temple was built at the foot of the volcano’s slopes, near what is now the town of Aso, and took as its guardian spirit the one who listens out upon the world for sounds of distress, Kanzeon.  The temple was named Saigandenji, and spawned another branch a short distance from the crater. 

1250 years later and more, three travellers – two Englishmen and a young Japanese woman – passed by this temple, and were struck by a whim to enter and pass some time within the precincts.  One can be somewhat overloaded by temples in Japan, and I confess my feelings at the time were rather jaded as far as such places went, and this attitude was shared to some extent by us all; so it was therefore an exceptional whim, and naturally enough in the manner of such things proved to have exceptional interest.  This interest was provided initially by one of the two remaining buildings in the old temple grounds.  A small shrine the size of a garden shed housed a black volcanic stone about 2′ across and 9″ deep, like a section of a treetrunk.  The flat surface was uppermost, highly polished, and the reverence due to the stone was on account of its healing properties.  A person afflicted in any of the limbs touches the stone, and rubs the affected part with that hand, uttering a prayer.  Garments hanging on the wall of the shrine are testimonies of cured visitants.  The source is of course the nearby volcano, and the branch temple near the crater has another similar polished rock with the same quality.  We were told that no other such stones existed in the district. 

On our way out, we were called into the {41} newer temple buildings and given food and drink – a custom we are assured is common though of course rarely offered by temples on the tourist list.  For us, it added to the magic of the whim, and the priest there told us stories of the area in reply to our questions.  He talked of the mountains round about; for instance how their successive summits portray a full-length profile of the Buddha when viewed from the far side of the plain.  I asked about one peak that had struck me acutely when we first entered the basin – a mountain of jagged and sharp points breaking the horizon into fragments, its form fascinated me from first sight.  The tale he told of that mountain strengthened my notion that places – like Saigandenji itself –will speak silently but eloquently to those with an affinity with them.  My affinity with this mountain was via my love and fascination for cats, for this was Mt Nekodake – literally “cats only” or “nothing but cats”!  The feline is a sinister creature to the Japanese, as it is for many people the world over, and the mountain is left to them. 

Sinister or not, cats are still kept as pets – they have their uses if nothing else, perhaps – and at one time all local cats disappeared.  The inhabitants, puzzled and suspicious of the enigmatic animal, investigated; and they found that the huge old boss-cat that everyone knew lived on Nekodake had called an annual gathering of the cats, and they were all to be found there.  Another version of this tale alleges that all the cats present had split ears like the points of the mountaintop. 

The second story was first told by a traveller who left the mountain in haste.  He had been benighted on the slopes, was lost, and resolved to ask for shelter at the first house he found showing a light.  {42} An old woman answered his knock, and agreed to his request.  Indoors, she was off busying herself when another woman entered.  “You must go”, she said “for if you stay on the mountain tonight you will be killed.” She explained further, that upon Nekodake dwelt only the spirits of cats, in the form of women.  She herself was warning him because she was the cat he had once kept and tended.  Enough warning, and ample return; speed was given to his heels as he ran, pursued by many cat-women, back to the safer domains of humans. 

Two things strike me most particularly about what I have written above, which I repeat here for my own emphasis, and for the reader’s thoughts:

Other than that, the sacred stones and the stories stand on their own, as results of the ‘coincidental’ type of fieldwork, akin to that side-phenomenon of book research, the casual glance which provides ‘by accident’ the right information.  I have much faith in this ‘anti-method’!