Teito Monogatari:
The Tale of the Imperial Capital
Part 2: Supernatural Babylon
Author: Hiroshi Aramata
Part 2: The Demon's Origin
Chapter 9: The Doshakaji Ritual
There was movement behind the shabby tenement building.
“Mr. Katō?” A young Chinese man peered anxiously at the lieutenant’s wound.
“I was careless, but it’s bad to leave things like this. Prepare the Doshakaji Ritual.1 Where is Kō Hō?”
“Kō Hō just came back. There’s no need to worry. I’ll get her.”
Lieutenant Katō adjusted his grip on his bleeding wrist. His wound had bled through his loose, comfortable layers of clothing. He went inside the tenement building and found Kō Hō waiting for him.
“What is the Doshakaji Ritual?” Kō Hō asked as she handed a cloth-wrapped bundle to the soldier. Katō accepted it with a blank expression, opened the wrapping, and then placed his severed hand on the rough rice mat flooring.
The hand had already turned blue. Angry veins bulged on the palm and fingers. The nails had become ashen, gray and obviously dead. It looked like a horrific porcelain statue and didn’t resemble a living hand at all.
“Damn you, Kōda.”
It was unusual for Katō to show his emotions. He was aware that Kō Hō was watching him, so he forced his face to stillness. "The Doshakaji Ritual is for empowerment. It is used by some esoteric Buddhist ascetics in situations like this.
"In Japan, a priest named Myōe incorporated it into Buddhist services and publicized it to the common people.2
“This is how the ritual works. The practitioner must recite the Kōmyō Shingon one hundred and eight times and empower the sand and earth. That sand and earth come to possess superior spiritual efficacy. If this sacred material is scattered over a corpse, a grave, or bones, the dead will obtain enlightenment, reach Nirvana, and be reborn upon a lotus blossom.
“The sand and earth of Mt. Kōya are the most effective to use for the ritual. If we perform the Doshakaji Ritual with sand and earth from Mt. Kōya, my hand should regain its vitality. Are the preparations complete?” he asked.
“They are.” The young man who had met Katō outside entered the room. “Everything is ready.” His voice was bright and enthusiastic. He was a Chinese man fighting for his homeland’s independence while studying in Japan. He never complained or showed any strain despite the obvious stressors created by his situation. His innocence and forthrightness in the face of adversity were of great use to Lieutenant Katō.
“Good. Let’s begin.”
The soldier sat down on the rice mat floor and crossed his legs. Before him were the dead hand and a small mound of sand and earth heaped upon white paper like brown sugar. This was the sand and earth of Mt. Kōya, which was associated with Shingon Esoteric Buddhism.3
The earth of Mt. Kōya was recorded in many books of ancient medicines. It was a pure form of a chemical compound called cinnabar. Since ancient times, cinnabar had been used in Daoist arts. It was often an ingredient used in elixirs of immortality. Modern scientists in Japan and elsewhere called cinnabar mercury sulfide, a deadly poison.
Incidentally, Mount Kōya had been well-known as a mercury mine even before Kūkai established the main stronghold of Shingon Esoteric Buddhism there. The mountain was important to alchemists, who used a great deal of mercury. According to one historical theory, the economic foundation of Shingon Esoteric Buddhism was supported by mercury. The monks of this Buddhist sect had traveled to various regions carrying cinnabar and performing funereal rites with it.
What were the properties of this mysterious cinnabar, exactly? The mineral compound delayed rigor mortis by making organic tissue loose and supple. When consumed, it was believed to extend a person’s life and cure intractable diseases. Eastern alchemy, far preceding its Western counterpart—especially the theories of Paracelsus—was characterized by the use of chemical elements like mercury as medicine. 4
One could say that the earth consecration performed in the Doshakaji Ritual was a kind of esoteric continuation of Eastern alchemy. The extraordinary Buddhist priest Kūkai had been a Daoist adept of Eastern alchemy.
“Rin Kaku, chant the Kōmyō Shingon,” Lieutenant Katō said sharply.
Rin Kaku stood up straight, startled, and then he chanted:
Praise be to the flawless, all-pervasive illumination
of the great seal of the Buddha.
The first few words of the Buddhist Mantra of Light came out a bit roughly, but Rin Kaku soon composed himself and chanted smoothly, finding the natural rhythm of the words. After a few minutes, the chant sounded more like music than speech.
Turn over to me the jewel, the lotus, and radiant light.
Lieutenant Katō listened to the Buddhist Mantra of Light silently for a few repetitions. When he judged the moment to be right, he took a pinch of the earth of Mt. Kōya in his fingers and started chanting the mantra himself. He sprinkled the blessed earth over his hand a pinch at a time.
The brown soil fluttered down to Katō’s swollen limb and clung to it. The dead hand didn’t twitch or move at all. Eventually, it was almost completely covered in earth.
When all the prepared soil had been sprinkled over the hand, Lieutenant Katō straightened his spine entered a meditation pose. He closed his eyes and became as still as a statue.
Rin Kaku never ceased chanting the Buddhist Mantra of Light.
Katō meditated for the next half hour. Time crept forward slowly, twisting in coils like a dying snake. Katō waited without moving a muscle, his inner eye open to the clear signs of change that would appear in his severed hand if the ritual was successful.
At long last, there was a change.
Rin Kaku’s voice was hoarse, but that was only to be expected.
Thirty minutes after the soil had been sprinkled over it, the hand writhed as if it were a living creature. The hand spread itself out on the floor, nails digging in like the paw of a tiger about to pounce. The five fingers crept forward toward Katō on their own. The dead hand lived again.
The earth of Mt. Kōya truly was a miraculous substance. It had created this repulsive miracle. This was just one secret technique that Lieutenant Katō knew about.
Isaac Titsingh, a Dutchman who once visited Japan to study customs related to weddings and funerals, wrote about the efficacy of the Doshakaji Ritual, which he witnessed in 1783:
A young Dutchman died at Dejima, so I ordered the physician to wash the corpse and place it on a table in front of an open window all night, exposing it to the outside air, so that the corpse would become completely stiff.
The next morning, the body was as stiff as a piece of wood. Zenbei, a Dutch interpreter, took a wallet out of his breast pocket.5 From it he drew out a rectangular piece of paper filled with a coarse powder resembling sand. This was the famous sacred soil I had heard so much about.
Zenbei put a pinch of it into the dead man’s ear, another pinch into his nostrils, and a third pinch into his mouth. Then, before long — whether it was due to the effect of this medicine, or because there was some other trick involved that I could not detect, the arms that had been folded on the chest dropped down of their own accord. In less than twenty minutes, as measured by my watch, the body completely regained its previous softness.
He recorded these observations in his book, Ceremonies Performed at Marriages and Funerals in Japan.
The same ritual that Titsingh had witnessed long ago now revived Katō’s hand. When the severed hand began to move, the soldier sensed it, opened his eyes wide, and snatched up the hand with a wide, unnerving grin.
Rin Kaku stopped chanting. The sudden silence seemed loud as Katō peered down at his filthy hand. He pressed the severed hand to the stump of his arm with a grimace. The hand convulsed like it had just received an electric shock.
The spirit of silence in the room was overwhelmed by the burning spirit of hatred dwelling there and, shuddering, retreated to the back of the room. The spirit concealed itself behind Rin Kaku and Kō Hō, who watched Katō without saying a world.
Lieutenant Katō smiled as his hand thrashed painfully before his eyes.
1 The name of this ritual, and this chapter, is somewhat
odd. The first two kanji mean “earth and sand,” the third means “add to or
increase,” and the fourth means “time” or “occasion.”.↩
2 Myōe (February 21, 1173 – February 11, 1232) was a Japanese Buddhist monk active during the Kamakura period who also went by the name Kōben. He was a contemporary of Jōkei and Hōnen.]
3 Shingon Esoteric Buddhism a
prominent Japanese school of
Vajrayana
(Tantric) Buddhism. Introduced from China in the 9th century by the monk Kūkai, its
core philosophy is that anyone can attain enlightenment in their lifetime
through specific mystical practices. ↩
4 Theophrastus
Bombast
von
Hohenheim
(10 November 1493 – 24 September 1541), known as Paracelsus, was a Swiss
physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German
Renaissance. Like his eastern counterparts, he made use of mercury in
chemistry experiments. From his study of the elements, Paracelsus adopted
the idea of tripartite alternatives to explain the nature of medicines,
which he thought to be composed of the
tria
prima
(‘three primes’ or principles): a combustible element (sulfur), a fluid and
changeable element (mercury), and a solid, permanent element (salt). ↩
5 The interpreter’s
name is given without
furigana. The surname is almost certainly Zenbei; the first name could be
Tedate or Yasushi. ↩
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