Speaking of trees, I may mention the Naniwaya "Kasa-matsu," or Hat-Pine,--not so much because it is an extraordinary tree as because it supports a large family who keep a little tea-house on the road to Sakai. The branches of the tree have been trained out-wards and downwards over a framework of poles, so that the whole presents the appearance of an enormous green hat of the shape worn by peasants and called Kasa. The pine is scarcely six feet high, but covers perhaps twenty square yards;--its trunk, of course, not being visible at all from outside the framework supporting the branches. Many people visit the house to look at the pine and drink a cup of tea; and nearly every visitor buys some memento of it,--perhaps a woodcut of the tree, or a printed copy of verses written by some poet in praise of it, or a girl's hairpin, the top of which is a perfect little green model ox the tree,--framework of poles and all,--with one tiny stork perched on it, The owners of the Naniwaya, as their tea-house is called, are not only able to make a good living, but to educate their children, by the exhibition of this tree, and the sale of such mementos.
I do not intend to tax my reader's patience by descriptions of the other famous temples of Ōsaka,--several of which are enormously old, and have most curious legends attached to them. But I may venture a few words about the cemetery of the Temple of One Soul,--or better, perhaps, the Temple of a Single Mind: Isshinji. The monuments there are the most extraordinary I ever saw. Near the main gate is the tomb of a wrestler,--Asahigorō Hachirō. His name is chiseled upon a big disk of stone, probably weighing a ton; and this disk is supported on the back of a stone image of a wrestler,--a grotesque figure, with gilded eyes starting from their sockets, and features apparently distorted by effort. It is a very queer thing,--half-comical, half-furious of aspect. Close by is the tomb of one Hirayama Hanibei,--a monument shaped like a _hyōtan,--_that is to say, like a wine-gourd such as travelers use for carrying saké. The most usual form of _hyōtan_ resembles that of an hour-glass, except that the lower part is somewhat larger than the upper; and the vessel can only stand upright when full or partly full,--so that in a Japanese song the wine-lover is made to say to his gourd, "_With you I fall._" Apparently the mighty to drink wine have a district all to themselves in this cemetery; for there are several other monuments of like form in the same row,--also one shaped like a very large saké-bottle (_isshōdokkuri_),[5] on which is inscribed a verse not taken from the sutras. But the oddest monument of all is a great stone badger, sitting upright, and seeming to strike its belly with its fore-paws. On the belly is cut a name, Inouyé Dennosuké, together with the verse:--