“I see nobody on the road,” said Alice.

“I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!”
…

“Who did you pass on the road?” the King went on, holding out his hand to the Messenger for some more hay.

“Nobody,” said the Messenger.

“Quite right,” said the King: “this young lady saw him too…”

— Through the Looking Glass – Chapter 7, by Lewis Caroll

Among Japan’s most famous cultural treasures are various mirrors. The most well known is “Yata no Kagami” (八咫鏡), a sacred mirror housed in the Ise Grand Shrine in Japan’s Mie Prefecture. According to Shinto tradition, the mirror was forged by a deity and hung from a tree to lure the goddess of the sun, Amaterasu, from a cave through the reflection of her own beauty.

In Japanese tradition, mirrors are representative of the concept of “truth” in that they show an unaltered version of reality. Historically, they were rare, valuable and revered objects.  First introduced into Japan from China about 2000-years ago, they were made by carefully polishing a type of cast bronze.  Their production was an art form developed through many generations of skilled craftsmanship. Japanese artisans would later add their own expertise to their creation.

Mirror-makers in both China and in Japan also experimented with modifying the reflecting surface, first by hardening it with hammer blows and then through the application of various metals. And in the process, they probably discovered a curious phenomenon. Amalgams of mercury applied to the hammered and polished faces of mirrors would very slightly change the structure of the underlying metal. This caused stresses that would minutely deform a casting, pulling parts of the mirror’s face imperceptibly out of alignment.

Looking directly into such a mirror, these deformations measuring less than 1/250th the thickness of a human hair are entirely invisible to the eye. However, a reflected image of the sun onto a flat surface reveals a ghostly pattern, usually following the slight variation of hammer-hardening caused by the shape of whatever ornamentation had been cast onto the back of the mirror. In this way, these “transparent” or “magical” mirrors thus produced a reflected image that slightly altered reality to create something perceived but unreal.

A few later Japanese mirror-makers perfected the technique to the extent that they could create reflected patterns that did not simply follow the designs cast into the backs of their mirrors. Most famously, some wealthier Japanese Christians during the period of Christian persecutions in Japan used these mirrors to conceal religious iconography. Ordinary looking mirrors with typically Japanese ornamentation might reflect images of the sun bearing the outlines of a crucifix or of the Virgin Mary.

These mirrors that reflect a mysterious image from within are called “makkyo” or “ma kagami” (魔鏡) in Japanese, the kanji translating literally as “demon mirror”.  This is a term curiously similar to, “makyō” (魔境), from Zen Buddhism, the kanji translating roughly as, “demon cave”, or the compound reading, “haunt of wicked men”.  This term refers to a delusional state that arises as a result of clinging to an illusory experience, usually something arising from within the practice of meditation.

The human mind is hardwired to seek out and to intuit patterns, such as those within a mirror. This trait kept our ancestors alive by giving them the ability to perceive and to utilize the order that defines our universe. It gives us the ability to plan from observation, to apprehend the future, and to improve our condition. So we search for patterns instinctively, endow them with the substance of names, and make them real by definition… even when they don’t exist.

Gaze upon anything long enough, and the patterns emerge, whether real or imagined. Some are merely vague and vaporous outlines, ethereal sensations and intuitions from the parts of our minds of which we’re unaware. But others are more apparent, stubborn, and difficult to discern from the objective “reality” in which we take part. We look at our own reflections, struggling to discern the patterns that tell us who and what we are, unaware of the flaws within the looking glass itself.

Links:

Physical research on “Oriental magic mirrors” by Sir Michael Victor Berry, a mathematical physicist at the University of Bristol, England (pdf warning):
https://michaelberryphysics.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/berry383.pdf

A short FAENA aleph article about the history of magic mirrors in China and Japan:
http://www.faena.com/aleph/articles/the-history-of-the-magic-mirrors-of-china-and-japan/

YouTube clip from the Japanese, Sankai News, showing a bronze mirror said to have been given by China to the Japanese shaman queen, Himiko (c.250 AD).  It shows the effect of light reflected on the mirror which produces a radiating sunlike reflection as well as showing the markings on the back of the mirror.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfCDXymofXk

Kyoto Journal article, The Magic Mirror Maker, about Yamamoto Akihisa.  The Kyoto artisan is possibly the very last traditional maker of makkyo.
http://www.kyotojournal.org/renewal/the-magic-mirror-maker/

If you’re in Kyoto and interested in learning about the production of these mirrors, tours of the Yamamoto Alloy Works can be set up through the Kyoto Artisans Concierge.
https://www.kyotoartisans.jp/en/2017/09/20/yamamoto-alloy-works/