“Never mind how I happen to know them…. I now want to speak to you
about Hagiwara’s funeral. The House of Hagiwara has its own
family-cemetery, of course; but to bury him there would not be proper.
He must be buried beside O-Tsuyu, the Lady Iijima; for his
karma-relation to her was a very deep one. And it is but right that you
should erect a tomb for him at your own cost, because you have been
indebted to him for many favors.”
Thus it came to pass that Shinzaburō was buried beside O-Tsuyu, in the
cemetery of Shin-Banzui-In, in Yanaka-no-Sasaki.
—_Here ends the story of the Ghosts in the Romance of the
Peony-Lantern._—
My friend asked me whether the story had interested me; and I answered
by telling him that I wanted to go to the cemetery of
Shin-Banzui-In,—so as to realize more definitely the local color of the
author’s studies.
“I shall go with you at once,” he said. “But what did you think of the
personages?”
“To Western thinking,” I made answer, “Shinzaburō is a despicable
creature. I have been mentally comparing him with the true lovers of
our old ballad-literature. They were only too glad to follow a dead
sweetheart into the grave; and nevertheless, being Christians, they
believed that they had only one human life to enjoy in this world. But
Shinzaburō was a Buddhist,—with a million lives behind him and a
million lives before him; and he was too selfish to give up even one
miserable existence for the sake of the girl that came back to him from
the dead. Then he was even more cowardly than selfish. Although a
samurai by birth and training, he had to beg a priest to save him from
ghosts. In every way he proved himself contemptible; and O-Tsuyu did
quite right in choking him to death.”
“From the Japanese point of view, likewise,” my friend responded,
“Shinzaburō is rather contemptible. But the use of this weak character
helped the author to develop incidents that could not otherwise,
perhaps, have been so effectively managed. To my thinking, the only
attractive character in the story is that of O-Yoné: type of the
old-time loyal and loving servant,—intelligent, shrewd, full of
resource,—faithful not only unto death, but beyond death…. Well, let us
go to Shin-Banzui-In.”
We found the temple uninteresting, and the cemetery an abomination of
desolation. Spaces once occupied by graves had been turned into
potato-patches. Between were tombs leaning at all angles out of the
perpendicular, tablets made illegible by scurf, empty pedestals,
shattered water-tanks, and statues of Buddhas without heads or hands.
Recent rains had soaked the black soil,—leaving here and there small
pools of slime about which swarms of tiny frogs were hopping.
Everything—excepting the potato-patches—seemed to have been neglected
for years. In a shed just within the gate, we observed a woman cooking;
and my companion presumed to ask her if she knew anything about the
tombs described in the Romance of the Peony-Lantern.
“Ah! the tombs of O-Tsuyu and O-Yoné?” she responded, smiling;—“you
will find them near the end of the first row at the back of the
temple—next to the statue of Jizo.”
Surprises of this kind I had met with elsewhere in Japan.
We picked our way between the rain-pools and between the green ridges
of young potatoes,—whose roots were doubtless feeding on the sub-stance
of many another O-Tsuyu and O-Yoné;—and we reached at last two
lichen-eaten tombs of which the inscriptions seemed almost obliterated.
Beside the larger tomb was a statue of Jizo, with a broken nose.
“The characters are not easy to make out,” said my friend—“but wait!”….
He drew from his sleeve a sheet of soft white paper, laid it over the
inscription, and began to rub the paper with a lump of clay. As he did
so, the characters appeared in white on the blackened surface.
“_Eleventh day, third month—Rat, Elder Brother, Fire—Sixth year of
Horéki_ [A. D. 1756].’… This would seem to be the grave of some
innkeeper of Nedzu, named Kichibei. Let us see what is on the other
monument.”
With a fresh sheet of paper he presently brought out the text of a
kaimyō, and read,—
“_En-myō-In, Hō-yō-I-tei-ken-shi, Hō-ni’:—‘Nun-of-the-Law, Illustrious,
Pure-of-heart-and-will, Famed-in-the-Law,—inhabiting the
Mansion-of-the-Preaching-of-Wonder._’…. The grave of some Buddhist
nun.”
“What utter humbug!” I exclaimed. “That woman was only making fun of
us.”
“Now,” my friend protested, “you are unjust to the, woman! You came
here because you wanted a sensation; and she tried her very best to
please you. You did not suppose that ghost-story was true, did you?”