Manyemon had coaxed the child indoors, and made her eat. She appeared
to be about eleven years old, intelligent, and pathetically docile. Her
name was Iné, which means "springing rice;" and her frail slimness made
the name seem appropriate.
When she began, under Manyemon's gentle persuasion, to tell her story,
I anticipated something queer from the accompanying change in her
voice. She spoke in a high thin sweet tone, perfectly even,--a tone
changeless and unemotional as the chanting of the little kettle over
its charcoal bed. Not unfrequently in Japan one may hear a girl or a
woman utter something touching or cruel or terrible in just such a
steady, level, penetrating tone, but never anything indifferent. It
always means that feeling is being kept under control.
"There were six of us at home," said Iné, "mother and father and
father's mother, who was very old, and my brother and myself, and
a little sister. Father was a _hyōguya,_ a paper-hanger: he papered
sliding-screens and also mounted kakemono. Mother was a hair-dresser.
My brother was apprenticed to a seal-cutter.
"Father and mother did well: mother made even more money than father.
We had good clothes and good food; and we never had any real sorrow
until father fell sick.
"It was the middle of the hot season. Father had always been healthy:
we did not think that his sickness was dangerous, and he did not think
so himself. But the very next day he died. We were very much surprised.
Mother tried to hide her heart, and to wait upon her customers as
before. But she was not very strong, and the pain of father's death
came too quickly. Eight days after father's funeral mother also died.
It was so sudden that everybody wondered. Then the neighbors told us
that we must make a _ningyō-no-haka_ at once,--or else there would be
another death in our house. My brother said they were right; but he put
off doing what they told him. Perhaps he did not have mercy enough, I
do not know; but the haka was not made." ...
*
"What is a _ningyō-no-haka_?" I interrupted.
"I think," Manyemon made answer, "that you have seen many
_ningyō-no-haka_ without knowing what they were;--they look just
like graves of children. It is believed that when two of a family
die in the same year, a third also must soon die. There is a saying,
_Always three graves._ So when two out of one family have been buried
in the same year, a third grave is made next to the graves of those
two, and in it is put a coffin containing only a little figure of
straw,--_wara-ningyō_; and over that grave a small tombstone is set up,
bearing a kaimyō.[1] The priests of the temple to which the graveyard
belongs write the kaimyō for these little gravestones. By making a
_ningyō-no-haka_ it is thought that a death may be prevented.... We
listen for the rest, Iné."