Books and Bookmen [15]
night, as Chu was taking a stirrup cup before going to
bed, the ghost of the awful judge came to the door and entered. Chu
promptly put the kettle on, mixed the negus, and made a night of it
with the festive fiend. Their friendship was never interrupted from
that moment. The judge even gave Chu a new heart (literally)
whereby he was enabled to pass examinations; for the heart, in
China, is the seat of all the intellectual faculties. For Mrs. Chu,
a plain woman with a fine figure, the ghost provided a new head, of
a handsome girl recently slain by a robber. Even after Chu's death
the genial spectre did not neglect him, but obtained for him an
appointment as registrar in the next world, with a certain rank
attached.
The next world, among the Chinese, seems to be a paradise of
bureaucracy, patent places, jobs, mandarins' buttons and tails, and,
in short, the heaven of officialism. All civilised readers are
acquainted with Mr. Stockton's humorous story of 'The Transferred
Ghost.' In Mr. Stockton's view a man does not always get his own
ghostship; there is a vigorous competition among spirits for good
ghostships, and a great deal of intrigue and party feeling. It may
be long before a disembodied spectre gets any ghostship at all, and
then, if he has little influence, he may be glad to take a chance of
haunting the Board of Trade, or the Post Office, instead of
"walking" in the Foreign Office. One spirit may win a post as White
Lady in the imperial palace, while another is put off with a
position in an old college library, or perhaps has to follow the
fortunes of some seedy "medium" through boarding-houses and third-
rate hotels. Now this is precisely the Chinese view of the fates
and fortunes of ghosts. Quisque suos patimur manes.
In China, to be brief, and to quote a ghost (who ought to know what
he was speaking about), "supernaturals are to be found everywhere."
This is the fact that makes life so puzzling and terrible to a child
of a believing and trustful character. These Oriental bogies do not
appear in the dark alone, or only in haunted houses, or at cross-
roads, or in gloomy woods. They are everywhere: every man has his
own ghost, every place has its peculiar haunting fiend, every
natural phenomenon has its informing spirit; every quality, as
hunger, greed, envy, malice, has an embodied visible shape prowling
about seeking what it may devour. Where our science, for example,
sees (or rather smells) sewer gas, the Japanese behold a slimy,
meagre, insatiate wraith, crawling to devour the lives of men.
Where we see a storm of snow, their livelier fancy beholds a comic
snow-ghost, a queer, grinning old man under a vast umbrella.
The illustrations in this paper are only a few specimens chosen out
of many volumes of Japanese bogies. We have not ventured to copy
the very most awful spectres, nor dared to be as horrid as we can.
These native drawings, too, are generally coloured regardless of
expense, and the colouring is often horribly lurid and satisfactory.
This embellishment, fortunately perhaps, we cannot reproduce.
Meanwhile, if any child looks into this essay, let him (or her) not
be alarmed by the pictures he beholds. Japanese ghosts do not live
in this country; there are none of them even at the Japanese
Legation. Just as bears, lions, and rattlesnakes are not to be
seriously dreaded in our woods and commons, so the Japanese ghost
cannot breathe (any more than a slave can) in the air of England or
America. We do not yet even keep any ghostly zoological garden in
which the bogies of Japanese, Australians, Red Indians, and other
distant peoples may be accommodated. Such an establishment is
perhaps to be desired in the interests of psychical research, but
that form of research has not yet been endowed by a cultivated and
progressive government.
The first to attract our attention represents, as I understand, the
common ghost, or simulacrum vulgare of psychical science. To this
complexion must we all come, according to the best Japanese
bed, the ghost of the awful judge came to the door and entered. Chu
promptly put the kettle on, mixed the negus, and made a night of it
with the festive fiend. Their friendship was never interrupted from
that moment. The judge even gave Chu a new heart (literally)
whereby he was enabled to pass examinations; for the heart, in
China, is the seat of all the intellectual faculties. For Mrs. Chu,
a plain woman with a fine figure, the ghost provided a new head, of
a handsome girl recently slain by a robber. Even after Chu's death
the genial spectre did not neglect him, but obtained for him an
appointment as registrar in the next world, with a certain rank
attached.
The next world, among the Chinese, seems to be a paradise of
bureaucracy, patent places, jobs, mandarins' buttons and tails, and,
in short, the heaven of officialism. All civilised readers are
acquainted with Mr. Stockton's humorous story of 'The Transferred
Ghost.' In Mr. Stockton's view a man does not always get his own
ghostship; there is a vigorous competition among spirits for good
ghostships, and a great deal of intrigue and party feeling. It may
be long before a disembodied spectre gets any ghostship at all, and
then, if he has little influence, he may be glad to take a chance of
haunting the Board of Trade, or the Post Office, instead of
"walking" in the Foreign Office. One spirit may win a post as White
Lady in the imperial palace, while another is put off with a
position in an old college library, or perhaps has to follow the
fortunes of some seedy "medium" through boarding-houses and third-
rate hotels. Now this is precisely the Chinese view of the fates
and fortunes of ghosts. Quisque suos patimur manes.
In China, to be brief, and to quote a ghost (who ought to know what
he was speaking about), "supernaturals are to be found everywhere."
This is the fact that makes life so puzzling and terrible to a child
of a believing and trustful character. These Oriental bogies do not
appear in the dark alone, or only in haunted houses, or at cross-
roads, or in gloomy woods. They are everywhere: every man has his
own ghost, every place has its peculiar haunting fiend, every
natural phenomenon has its informing spirit; every quality, as
hunger, greed, envy, malice, has an embodied visible shape prowling
about seeking what it may devour. Where our science, for example,
sees (or rather smells) sewer gas, the Japanese behold a slimy,
meagre, insatiate wraith, crawling to devour the lives of men.
Where we see a storm of snow, their livelier fancy beholds a comic
snow-ghost, a queer, grinning old man under a vast umbrella.
The illustrations in this paper are only a few specimens chosen out
of many volumes of Japanese bogies. We have not ventured to copy
the very most awful spectres, nor dared to be as horrid as we can.
These native drawings, too, are generally coloured regardless of
expense, and the colouring is often horribly lurid and satisfactory.
This embellishment, fortunately perhaps, we cannot reproduce.
Meanwhile, if any child looks into this essay, let him (or her) not
be alarmed by the pictures he beholds. Japanese ghosts do not live
in this country; there are none of them even at the Japanese
Legation. Just as bears, lions, and rattlesnakes are not to be
seriously dreaded in our woods and commons, so the Japanese ghost
cannot breathe (any more than a slave can) in the air of England or
America. We do not yet even keep any ghostly zoological garden in
which the bogies of Japanese, Australians, Red Indians, and other
distant peoples may be accommodated. Such an establishment is
perhaps to be desired in the interests of psychical research, but
that form of research has not yet been endowed by a cultivated and
progressive government.
The first to attract our attention represents, as I understand, the
common ghost, or simulacrum vulgare of psychical science. To this
complexion must we all come, according to the best Japanese