But Kobodaishi himself once forgot to put the ten beside the character O
on the tablet which he painted with the name of the Gate O-Te-mon of the
Emperor's palace. And the Emperor at Kyoto having asked him why he had
not put the ten beside the character, Kobodaishi answered: 'I forgot;
but I will put it on now.' Then the Emperor bade ladders be brought; for
the tablet was already in place, high above the gate. But Kobodaishi,
standing on the pavement before the gate, simply threw his brush at the
tablet; and the brush, so thrown, made the ten there most admirably, and
fell back into his hand.
Kobodaishi also painted the tablet of the gate called Ko-kamon of the
Emperor's palace at Kyoto. Now there was a man, dwelling near that
gate, whose name was Kino Momoye; and he ridiculed the characters which
Kobodaishi had made, and pointed to one of them, saying: 'Why, it looks
like a swaggering wrestler!' But the same night Momoye dreamed that a
wrestler had come to his bedside and leaped upon him, and was beating
him with his fists. And, crying out with the pain of the blows, he
awoke, and saw the wrestler rise in air, and change into the written
character he had laughed at, and go back to the tablet over the gate.
And there was another writer, famed greatly for his skill, named
Onomo Toku, who laughed at some characters on the tablet of the Gate
Shukaku-mon, written by Kobodaishi; and he said, pointing to the
character Shu: 'Verily shu looks like the character "rice".' And that
night he dreamed that the character he had mocked at became a man; and
that the man fell upon him and beat him, and jumped up and down upon his
face many times--even as a kometsuki, a rice-cleaner, leaps up and down
to move the hammers that beat the rice--saying the while: 'Lo! I am
the messenger of Kobodaishi!' And, waking, he found himself bruised and
bleeding as one that had been grievously trampled.
And long after Kobodaishi's death it was found that the names written
by him on the two gates of the Emperor's palace Bi-fuku-mon, the Gate of
Beautiful Fortune; and Ko-ka-mon, the Gate of Excellent Greatness--were
well-nigh effaced by time. And the Emperor ordered a Dainagon [1], whose
name was Yukinari, to restore the tablets. But Yukinari was afraid to
perform the command of the Emperor, by reason of what had befallen other
men; and, fearing the divine anger of Kobodaishi, he made offerings,
and prayed for some token of permission. And the same night, in a dream,
Kobodaishi appeared to him, smiling gently, and said: 'Do the work even
as the Emperor desires, and have no fear.' So he restored the tablets
in the first month of the fourth year of Kwanko, as is recorded in the
book, Hon-cho-bun-sui.
And all these things have been related to me by my friend Akira.