mouth, and her bright eyes softened a little.
“My mother is very ill,” she said gently, “and we are poor and have
no money to buy medicine, so I am going to the shrine to ask the gods
to give her health.” She hid her whole face behind her sleeve, and
Chokichi where he sat could hear her sobbing softly.
“Do not be sad,” he entreated, rising and going to her. He laid one
hand on her shoulder, patting her lightly. “The gods will surely
grant the prayer of so sweet a pilgrim, and I have money enough to buy
medicine for your mother when we come down.”
“Come! Let us go!” she said, rising briskly.
Chokichi was astonished at the sudden change. The roguish light came
back into her eyes. She hurried on ahead, looking back at him over her
shoulder from time to time. Chokichi was fairly infatuated.
“Wait! Wait a moment!” he called, for her shapely white legs were
speeding so fast that he could hardly keep up with her. “Wait for me! I
have something to tell you!”
The girl stopped, laughing gleefully. Chokichi, puffing from the chase,
came up to her.
“Might it not be”--He stopped, embarrassed. When he had courted Kiku,
all had been done through go-betweens. This was new work for him. He
began again, “Might it not be that if you had a husband to take care
of you, you would not need to take such long journeys all alone to
strange shrines?”
Her roguish eyes went up at the corners until they were almost lost in
her hair.
“Truly,” she answered, “it might be; but now I go to pray. When we
return, we will talk of other things.”
The way wound dimly now through thick woods,--great cedars with trunks
like temple pillars. Ahead of them, across the path, stood the heavy
_torii_ that marked the beginning of the holy ground. Suddenly the girl
stumbled, then gathered herself together with a groan.
“What is the matter? What have you done? Let me help you!” Chokichi
cried, hurrying to her.
“I have hurt my ankle and twisted my knee,” she said faintly, leaning
against a tree. “My sandal string is cutting me, and I cannot stoop to
loosen it!”
“Let me fix it for you,” said Chokichi, squatting beside her and
touching lightly the injured ankle.
As he touched it, suddenly it changed under his hand. It was no longer
the shapely, slender foot of a young woman, but a great hairy, muscular
paw like that of a bear. A yell of demon laughter was in the air. He
looked up to see that his companion had grown to the height of a giant,
and was staring at him with terrible eyes from a monkey face. Only
the dress remained to show that this fearful monster was the charming
maiden of the moment before.
Mad with fright, Chokichi fled through the _torii_ into the shrine
itself that stood with mossy roof in the dark grove. An old man was
sitting in the priest’s room adjoining the temple, and over a _hibachi_
by his side a tea-kettle was boiling merrily. The homely sight and
sound were reassuring, and Chokichi felt a little better for the
pleasant human companionship.
“Welcome! Welcome!” called the old man. “Come in and take a cup of tea
and have a whiff of tobacco. The day is hot, and you must be tired with
your long climb up the hill.”
So gentle, so polite, so smiling was his host, that Chokichi sat and
talked with him, forgetting the prayers that he had come so far to
offer. At last he told him all about his strange adventure on the
hillside. The old man chuckled as he described the girl.
“Ay, truly!” he said, wagging his head knowingly.
Then Chokichi told of the great hairy foot.
“Was it like this?” shouted the old man, with a yell, rising suddenly,
and Chokichi saw that same foot thrust out in front of him, while far
above his head, with staring, terrible eyes and monkey face, was the
monster from which he had fled. Around him echoed peals of derisive
laughter.
This time it was rage rather than fright that moved Chokichi, and he
sprang at his tormentor like a wounded tiger. Gripping the great hairy
leg tightly with both hands, he held on until he lost consciousness.
A hunter, passing the shrine late in the day, found him lying on the
ground just within the _torii_. He was bleeding from a cut on the head.
In one hand he held a bunch of reddish hair. It took some time to bring
him to his senses, and then he told his story.
“I’ve got something to show for it,” he said manfully. “I tore this out
of the monster before he threw me down.”
The hunter looked at it curiously.
“That is fox-hair!” he exclaimed. “You were bewitched! I know those
foxes, they come from the Inari shrine on the other side of Futago
Yama!”
Slowly Chokichi toiled down the mountain-side through the darkness;
sadly he let himself into his silent house.
When Tōshi returned to his work the next morning, he found his master
with a bad cut on his forehead, but welcoming his apprentice with a
joy that caused that mischievous youngster some surprise.
“And did the master’s business prosper yesterday?” he inquired humbly,
but with a twinkle in his eye that showed he had his own suspicions.
“Tōshi,” answered Chokichi enigmatically, “if a man would see his
business prosper, let him mind it himself, nor clamor to the gods for
aid.”
FOOTNOTES:
[40] The mitten-shaped sock worn by Japanese.
[41] The old-clothes dealer.
[42] A square of cloth used for wrapping bundles.
VII
THE BUYER OF AMÉ
_Amé_, a sweetmeat made from wheat gluten, very
nourishing and wholesome for children.
Old man Genjiro was sitting over the last coals in his _hibachi_,
warming his hands and blinking sleepily. The shutters of the little
sweetmeat shop were closed for the night. The street outside was quiet.
Even the footsteps of the few belated wayfarers who were still abroad
were muffled by the soft, heavy snow that had wrapped the city as in a
garment.
The old man nodded over the dying embers, jerking himself awake from
time to time to poke the few coals together with the iron fire-sticks,
or to rake and pick over the mound of ashes. His worn old face was
seamed and crisscrossed with wrinkles, but they were the tracks of
kindly emotions, not of the fiercer passions. His wadded blue cotton
garments were wrapped tightly about his small, withered body, and his
rough, red, bare feet were doubled up under him as he sat on the
matted floor. He shivered a little as the red coals grew smaller and
smaller.
“What a cold night it is!” he said to himself. “I am glad I do not
have to be out pulling a jinrikisha;” and he laughed cheerfully, as he
looked about with some pride on his little shop, and his stock in trade
spread out in the front of it in small glass showcases.
Genjiro felt that he was living like a lord in his old age after his
years of toil, first in the rice-fields, then in the shafts of a
jinrikisha. He had lived honestly always, and had brought up three
sons, who were now his pride and joy,--strong men all,--two, pullers of
jinrikisha like their father before them, and one, the baby, serving
his time in the army. When he grew old his sons had set him up in the
little shop, and he managed to make a comfortable living off of the
small coins that the children in the neighborhood paid him for his
wares.
Genjiro’s old wife, Fusa, was pottering about the back room, making the
bed for the night. He could hear her snort and snuffle about her work,
for she was asthmatic, and the heavy winter comfortables that she was
handling were almost too much for her strength.
“Put on all the comfortables that we have,” he called to her; “I am
coming to bed in a minute. No one will come to buy _amé_ on such a
night as this.”
Fusa grunted in response and went on with her work. Genjiro sat still
over his fire, too sleepy and warm to leave it for the cold little back
room, even with the prospect of all the comfortables in the house to
lure him to his bed. He heard the great bell of the temple close by
boom out the hour, but he was too sleepy to count the slow strokes.
It was Fusa’s voice from the next room that roused him with the words,
“Some one is at the door!”
He jumped up with a start and heard a very thin, weak voice calling,
“Excuse me,” just outside the shop. He pushed open the shutter in
surprise that any one should come at that hour for _amé_. A woman stood
in the street. He could not see her clearly in the darkness and amid
the falling snow, which covered her dress and lay upon her disheveled
hair and seemed to whiten even her face. She glided rather than stepped
into the shop.
Genjiro hardly knew what to say, but he bowed politely, on all fours,
lifting his head at intervals from between his hands to remark that
it was a cold night, that it was the first time that he had had the
pleasure of seeing his visitor, and that he hoped he might be able to
serve her.
The woman’s face was very sweet and sad, as she bowed in response to
Genjiro’s greetings. “I would like to buy a little of your _amé_,”
she said, and she pointed to a long, bright-colored paper bag of the
confection, such as is sold to mothers when they bring their babies to
the temple for the _miya mairi_.[43] Genjiro handed it to her, and
received in return a curiously blackened and mouldy coin. Then the
customer glided out into the street, and the old man closed his shutter
and retired to the back room.
“What was it?” said Fusa, for Genjiro was shaking all over.
“Only a woman who wanted to buy _amé_,” he said; but he shuddered as
he crept into bed, and it was a long time before he was warm enough to
sleep.
The next day the old man was pale and distraught. When the baby of
the clog-seller across the street came toddling over, holding out a
rin[44] piece with a square hole in the middle, he was so absorbed
in thinking of his strange customer that he did not see her at all,
and her dirty round mouth began to pucker, and her fat little bosom
to heave up and down under its red wadded gown, before he turned his
abstracted gaze upon her. To be sure, he comforted her with a beautiful
long piece of _amé_ jelly and a little paper flag with a round red sun
in the middle; but her faith in him was only partially restored, and
she trotted home so depressed that she nearly ran under the wheels of a
passing jinrikisha, and wailed loudly when the runner threw her aside
as if she had been a pillow. And when the boys came home from school at
noon, they were surprised to see that their friend Genjiro, instead of
sitting in the front of the shop, bowing and smiling over his tempting
wares, was hugging his _hibachi_, smoking gloomily, and staring into
the street with vacant eyes. It took two shouts and much jingling of
small coin to wake him from his reverie.
That night, Genjiro and his old wife went to bed early, and the shop
was closely shuttered and quite dark when the temple bell sounded ten.
Genjiro was not asleep, however, and he lay listening to the sounds in
the street, with Fusa wheezing and snoring beside him. And then, again
he heard the weak, pleading voice.
“Excuse me for troubling you,” it said.
Genjiro lay and shivered, but his kind heart at last got the better of
his fears, and he rose and went into the shop. Softly he slid open the
shutter, and his last night’s visitor stood before him.
“I am making you great trouble,” she said, “but I would like some
more of your nice _amé_,” and she bowed, and pointed as before to a
bright-colored paper bag.
Genjiro gave it to her, she slipped into his hand again a rusty coin,
and glided away. Trembling, the old man closed the shutter, crept back
to bed, and lay cowering with cold and fear.
Every night for five nights the same thing happened, and Genjiro, what
with fear and bewilderment, was a changed man. His business suffered,
for the boys now patronized the itinerant sweetmeat vender who came
into the street every noon and stood close to Genjiro’s shop with his
little cart of sweets, blowing a bubbly brass horn and dancing at
intervals for the crowd of children that flocked about him. Genjiro was
too forlorn to make an effort to hold his trade. He only sat in the
back of the shop and watched the small coins that ought to be his drop
into his supplanter’s money-box.
At last Genjiro forced himself up to a high resolve. He would follow
the stranger and see what became of her. He never went to bed now until
his weird customer had made her nightly purchase, but sat and shivered
over his _hibachi_ until she came. Fusa was sure that the visitor was
a fox-woman, and that her husband was bewitched; and when he told her
that night that he was going to follow the stranger, the poor old woman
groveled on the floor, entreating him not to be so rash.
“She will only lead you into some great danger. You will never come
back if you follow that fox-woman,” she cried; but though Genjiro
shuddered, he remained firm, and all day Fusa mourned him as one
already dead.
When the woman came that night, she looked paler and sadder than ever,
and she bowed very low and wept as she handed Genjiro the rusty rin in
payment for her purchase. When the old man saw her distress, he was
firmer than ever in his resolve to follow her and discover her home and
her grief. He had put on a clean pair of jinrikisha-man’s shoes, so
that there should be no sound from his footsteps. As he stepped down
from the shop platform to draw the shutter, he closed himself out into
the street, and glided along in his soft foot-gear almost as silently
as the retreating figure that he followed. He had to run at a dog-trot
to keep up with her, so quickly did she move. They passed the temple,
the great curves of its roof throwing dark shadows in the moonlight,
then on into the graveyard beyond.
There was a faint smell of incense in the air, and a few coals burned
dimly on a tombstone. Genjiro hesitated,--a graveyard is not a
pleasant place to enter so late at night,--but his strange guide seemed
to feel his hesitation, and turning, looked at him sadly and beckoned
to him. Genjiro followed manfully. “Poor thing! She wants something of
me!” he said to himself. They came to a great tree girdled with a straw
rope, under which was a grave, and there the woman disappeared.
So he had been selling _amé_ every night to a ghost! Surely Genjiro’s
fears were justified! He was weak and trembling when he reached home,
and it was only after several cups of saké, which Fusa brought him when
she saw his condition, that he could speak connectedly enough to tell
his story.
Far into the night they talked the matter over, but they could not
tell what to do next. At last Fusa said, “You must go to the priest
to-morrow, and he will know who is buried in that grave. Then,
perhaps, we can find out what the ghost wants.”
Very early the next morning Genjiro and Fusa went to the temple, taking
with them the six rusty coins that their ghostly visitor had paid. They
found the place alive with worshipers, for it was a feast day. The
priests were almost too busy to attend to the humble pair, but at last
a gentle old ecclesiastic took pity on their evident distress, called
them to the priests’ house close by the shrine, and asked them kindly
what their trouble was. They told the story, passing it from one to
the other in their excitement over its details, and handed over to the
priest the coins, neatly folded in a piece of white paper.
The holy man looked grave. “Where is the tomb?” he said. “Can you show
it to me now?”
“Surely, your reverence,” answered Genjiro eagerly; “it is just under
the sacred cedar tree,--the great tree with a rope around it.”
“Show it to me,” said the priest, and together they went to the
graveyard. The grave was a new one; only a wooden post bearing the
posthumous name of the deceased marked the spot.
“This is the grave of Kiku,” said the good man, and tears of pity stood
in his eyes. “She was the wife of Chokichi Sato, and she died less than
ten days ago. I myself performed the ceremony when we laid her and her
unborn child here under the sacred cedar. Without doubt the gods have
sent her to you with a message.”
Then Genjiro and Fusa stood, awestruck, before the grave, while the
priest returned to the temple to tell what had come to pass. And when
the priests and the people heard the story of the woman ghost that had
come nightly to Genjiro’s shop to buy _amé_, they came in a great crowd
and stood about the grave.
And one who heard the story went to Chokichi, the husband of Kiku,
and told him, and he hastened to the place just as he was, in his
white-lettered carpenter’s blouse and blue tights. And when he saw the
priests and the people standing, he said, “Will you permit that we
open the grave, and learn whether there is any reason why my wife has
visited the _améya_[45] every night for a week?”
And the priests answered, “We will permit it, and we will, ourselves,
watch the opening and say prayers for the repose of O Kiku San’s
spirit.”
Then picks and hoes were brought, and the earth, wet and heavy with
melted snow, was moved from the grave, until at last they came to the
great cask in which the dead had been placed for burial.
And Chokichi said, “If it please your reverences, I will open the
coffin, that I alone may be polluted by the touch of the dead.” And he
opened the coffin, the priests chanting a mass for the repose of the
young wife’s soul.
And when the cover was removed, a little gurgle came from within the
coffin, and all the people saw the dead mother sitting within, and at
her feet a tiny living baby, smiling and gurgling, and sucking a piece
of _amé_. And Chokichi lifted out the baby, all naked as it was, and
folded it from the winter air in his bosom. “My little son!” he said,
and he wept.
Then said the old priest to all the people as they stood amazed, “Now
ye can see how great is mother love, that will, even from the grave,
watch over and feed its offspring. Behold how for her baby’s sake this
poor mother hath given to the _améya_ the six rin[46] which she needed
to keep her from entering naked into the spirit world,” and he placed
reverently in the coffin the paper containing the six rusty coins that
Genjiro had given to him.
Then he turned to Genjiro, and said, “The kindness of this man,
opening his door night after night to the mother’s ghost, has given
back to Chokichi his son.” And Genjiro and Chokichi returned to their
homes, each followed by a wondering crowd.
From that time on everything that Genjiro did prospered. From all the
city people came to buy _amé_ of him, and to hear his story. Mothers
sent their children to spend their stray coins at his shop, for
they said, “He is a kind man, and will always give you good _amé_.”
And the rival _améya_ with his bubbly trumpet came no more into the
neighborhood, but danced and played in the next ward, where there was
no Genjiro to hold the trade of all the street.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] The presentation of a baby at the parish temple, a ceremony that
takes place when the child is about a month old.
[44] A coin something like the Chinese “cash,” worth about half a mill.
[45] One who sells _amé_.
[46] On the banks of the River of Death an old hag waits to strip the
souls of their clothing as they pass by. Therefore with the dead must
always be buried six rin, with which to propitiate the old woman.
VIII
THE PEONY LANTERN
Old Hanzo stood at the front door bowing double and sucking in his
breath as his master stepped into the jinrikisha and stood for a moment
to be firmly wrapped about by the dust-robe that the kurumaya held in
his hands.
“Good-by, Hanzo,” called the young man gayly as he whirled away.
“Do not expect me back until late to-night, and mind that you have
something good to eat ready for me when I return.”
The old servant bowed, and clattered off on his clogs to discuss with
his wife the carrying out of the master’s order.
Tēichi Ogiwara was a gay young fellow, who, with more wealth than was
quite good for him, was living carelessly and idly in his pleasant
little house in the Negishi suburb of Tokyo. Of samurai descent,
brought up in the stern traditions of his ancestors, he had come to
Tokyo a few years before from the castle town of Wakamatsu, an earnest
youth, on fire with zeal to so educate himself as to be of use to his
beloved country. While his parents lived, their delight in his progress
through the University, their joy in the letters in which he breathed
forth his high resolves, had kept him steadily at his work and away
from the temptations that are set for the feet of unwary students in
the capital.
But things had changed greatly for him within a year. His parents had
died, leaving to him a substantial little income; and after the first
grief was over, the young fellow, looking about him for companionship,
had made friends with one of his classmates in the medical school,--a
brilliant scholar and amusing talker, popular with classmates and
instructors alike, and always ready to engage in any enterprise that
promised either pleasure or profit to himself. Tēichi, by nature
silent and reserved, was attracted by the gayety and energy of
Komura, and Komura, himself of low birth and small financial resources,
was only too delighted to be taken up by a young fellow of independent
means, and of a social position far higher than his own. And so the
friendship grew apace, Komura gaining daily greater influence over
Tēichi, until, at the expiration of a few months, he had subtly sapped
the high ideals and brought the younger and more innocent man as nearly
as possible to his own level.
“You have brains enough and money enough. Why do you dig so at your
studies? If I had your chances, wouldn’t I have a good time? Leave
the hard work and plain living to us of the heimin. We have to do it
because we have neither money nor place. I’d show you how to use your
money so as to get some good out of it, if you’d let me!”
This was the general trend of Komura’s influence, and to Tēichi the
temptations of a luxury and dissipation that he had always been taught
to shun grew irresistible. It seemed as if the asceticism of his early
life, the plain living and high thinking that are a part of the samurai
creed, had been the mere restraining shell of his pupa state, from
which he emerged suddenly as a full-grown butterfly, seeking pleasure
wherever it was to be found.
It was at Komura’s suggestion that he had taken the dainty house at
Negishi, hidden behind a bamboo fence from the quiet lane that was its
only approach, and with a lovely garden shaded by pine and cherry, cool
with running water, picturesque with mossy lanterns, rustic bridges,
azalea-covered mountain ranges, and pebbly walks. Here, by Komura’s
recommendation, old Hanzo had been installed as major domo in a lodge
at the gate, where he lived with his old wife Koma, keeping guard in
the master’s absence and caring for his comfort when he was at home.
Hanzo and Koma were both discreet, and said nothing to any one of
the high revels that went on within the house,--of kurumas that came
bringing not only gay young blades like Ogiwara himself, but daintier
freight in the shape of bright-eyed, black-haired, brilliantly robed
geishas, who plied the saké bottle, and danced, and bandied wit, and
entertained the uproarious young fellows far into the night. Then there
would be times when Hanzo had a long rest, and his master never came
home at all, but spent his days and nights wandering about the city to
various questionable resorts, or seeking new stimulus for his jaded
senses by trips into the country to places famous for the pleasures
offered to travelers. If Tēichi ever thought in those reckless days
of his stern old samurai father, of the joy of his mother in his high
ideals, it was to push the thought out of his mind as quickly as
possible, and obstinately shut the door against its reëntrance.
To-day he trundled merrily along in his jinrikisha to meet Komura
at Kameido, where, after viewing the plum-blossoms and spending a
sentimental afternoon in writing poems to hang upon the branches
of the gray old trees, they hoped to pick up a jovial party for an
evening together at an eel-house near Megané Bashi. Through the damp
greenness of Uyeno Park he sped, along the front of the great temple
and pleasure-ground of Asakusa, across the Sumida River, and into the
Kameido grounds, where, by the quaint semicircular bridge that arches
over the “Pond of the Heart,” he found Komura awaiting him, a big
bundle in his hand wrapped in a purple _furoshiki_.