Musical Planetarium

陰陽雑記云　器物百年を経て　化して精霊を得てより　人の心を誑す　これを付喪神と号すといへり

(As has been told in Onnmyoh-zakki — a tool or an object, after a hundred years have passed, will transform to acquire a spirit and deceive people’s hearts. These are referred to as Tsukumogami.)

Tsukumogami-emaki (付喪神絵巻) (Kyoto University Library^🪐、National Diet Library^🪐)

The protagonist of the piece should be a tsukumogami named Karakasa-kohzoh (唐傘小僧), or she may as well be Hone-karakasa (骨傘). Karakasa (唐傘) is the oil-paper umbrella that spread to Japan from the Tang Dynasty of China. The one-eyed, one-legged portrait of Karakasa-kohzoh with a wry face, as well as the power to call the clouds and the rain by Hone-karakasa, both resonate among the delicately interwoven rhymes of the lyrics.

A discarded umbrella takes on a human form, idling away while playing games, lamenting the wordless departure of her old companion. Although she has not been able to understand this, she seems to be learning to let go. This seems at odds with the original story of monsters committing misdeeds before repenting and attaining Buddhist enlightenment, yet both exhibit the depth of the hurt of being discarded, with the difference between outwards and inwards. Also shared between the tales is that time comes to heal everything — whether it’s attaining enlightenment through practice or “go away with the rain clouds” (雨雲ごとどっか行っちゃう), the tangible eventually gives way to the power of time, voidness, and infinity. Just as Mishima Yukio writes before quoting this myth —

[…] われわれの生存は、一定のあいだ持続した時間の凝固物に囲まれて保たれていた。たとえば、ただ家事の便に指物師が作った小抽斗も、時を経るにつれ時間がその物の形態を凌駕して、数十年数百年のちには、逆に時間が凝固してその形態をとったかのようになるのである。

(Our existence is surrounded and maintained by the coagulation of time that lasts for a certain period. For example, even a little drawer, made by a cabinetmaker for the convenience of household chores, is something whose form will be transcended by time as seasons pass. After decades and centuries, it will be as if time had congealed and taken on the form of it instead.)

一定の小さな空間が、はじめは物体によって占められていたのが、凝縮した時間によって占められるようになる。それは或る種の霊への化身だ。

(A certain small space, even if initially occupied by an object, will become filled with condensed time. That is an incarnation towards a kind of spirits.)

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (金閣寺)

In such an age that is so keen on treating all living matter as mere objects and tools, perhaps we should all seek some inspiration from the primitive beliefs that spirits reside in everything and the nature is to be revered.