The Lives of the Eight Dogs of the Satomi of Southern Fusa

Volume IV, Book III

Assembled by the Master of the Crooked Pavilion in the Eastern Capital

Chapter XXXV

Nengyoku playfully borrows a flute;

Myōshin sorrowfully returns a bride

Kobungo, having reheated the gruel, was about to offer some to Shino when someone announced himself loudly and entered the inn. Kobungo got to his feet without replying, opened the paper door with a clatter, and dashed to the front of the inn to see.

It was none other than the Kamakura practitioner of austerities Nengyoku. In his left hand he held a great conch, and in his right a fan dyed with persimmon lees with which he fanned his chest; he sat next to the lamp in front of the inn and gazed at Kobungo, grinning.

“Champion! I have returned. Last night’s washing of the god-bier was more thronged than I had heard it would be—notwithstanding the brawling of gallants from all over when it had ended, which rather spoiled the scene. No matter what cove they come from, young men’s hearts are hard for even fierce, swift Susanoo to fathom.¹ I had thought to come back this morning, but the beach was so cool as to make one forget ’twas summer, nor was there flea or mosquito to disturb one. I could hardly tear my gaze from the labors of the brine-boilers—the salt of the earth they are, and a rare sight—I spent today there, too.

“I recently made use of Your Lordship’s strength to triumph in a quarrel. Those clouds have now cleared from my heart; I have besides been to view all the local historical remains, even unto Mama and Kōnodai. I have tarried long, and must return to my home tomorrow or the next day. I shall only trouble you a little while longer.”

He had been told what he had most wished not to hear, but Kobungo could not order the man to leave; he pondered, at his wits’ end, then said, “So your stay has come to an end so soon. I should feast you tonight, or at least make a show of it—’tis only proper. But what am I to do? The girls all went away yesterday for home leave, as is our local custom—there is no one here. Even my father is gone; somebody invited him to a neighboring village. I am alone here. But let me give you an evening meal, stranger though I am to the kitchen. Will you not tell me what you want?”

Nengyoku shook his head in reply. “Nay, I ate and drank enough on my way back here; not even the finest delicacy could find room in my belly until tomorrow. There cannot be any guests in that room—pray lend me a mosquito net. I will go and sleep. Now!” With that he braced his conch on the floor and went to stand up, giving a great cry as he did so.

Kobungo stared at the shell and said, “That is a rare shell—enormous. Where did you buy it?”

Nengyoku shifted it to his right hand as he explained: “I found this in somebody’s house by the beach just now, and got it in exchange for a little drinking money. Fill it with water and it will hold more than two quarts—perhaps as much as a gallon. Look.”

He held it out to Kobungo, who took it and looked at it this way and that. “This is indeed an enormous conch. Even I, who live near the beach, have not seen many like it. Things gather to them that like them. A conch would naturally present itself soonest to the eye of an ascetic,” he said with a smile.

Nengyoku returned his grin before turning his gaze aside. “Is that a foot-and-eight flute² at the foot of yonder wall?” he asked, pointing. “Do you like the flute, milord? Or do my eyes deceive me?”

Kobungo turned his gaze toward the flute. “It is, as you say, a foot-and-eight. I do not dabble in music, but until recently men known for gallants were rarely seen without a seal-case and a single-segment flute at their waists.³ Now that fashion has dwindled, though, and so somebody must have left that there, forgotten.”

While he spoke, Nengyoku shuffled forward on his knees, reached out, and snatched up the flute. He wiped it on his sleeve, moistened the mouth-hole, and piped a few experimental tones. “This is a fine flute. You say you are uncertain as to its owner? Then I shall borrow it from you for the night, milord. I have nothing to do but sleep tonight, and lying in the mosquito net fattening fleas is rather too dull, even for a night on the road. Then, too, tonight is the metal-monkey night.⁴ A trifle it may be, but ’twill be perfect for whiling away my idleness. I shall amuse myself quietly, awaiting the moon. Well, then,” he said, getting to his feet, the flute at his side.

“By all means, do as you please,” Kobungo replied. “I have no need of that flute.”

With that Kobungo hastily lit another lantern with the flame from the first and carried it with him as he led Nengyoku to a distant room, under a separate roof from the main house. Here Kobungo handed to Nengyoku the pack he had been carrying for him, before returning to the room he had formerly occupied.

Here he sighed, in spite of himself, thinking, “On top of everything else, to have that ascetic here—I shall not rest easy tonight. And yet I have no means of expelling him now. Yea, if I used him harshly and sent him elsewhere I should only be suspected. He said he would await the moon with the night, amusing himself with that flute. Has he something in mind? Even if his intent is not particularly evil, if he knows my secrets he is my enemy. I should stab him to death and stop his mouth forever. That would be ‘facing the moment and adapting to changes,’⁵ and what I ought to do: but what I can do nothing about is the one who lies sick in the back room. Even if his is nothing more than a bad illness that does not threaten his life, I have a hard task that Hodayū charged me with at the sheaf-stack, which presses me so that I cannot put it off: oh, how I hate the likeness he gave me then! Which, indeed, was only opened before me in a very hurried manner; let me look upon it again.”

With that, he slipped his hand into his bosom. “What goes on?” He groped around in his left sleeve, then his right, opened his collar, shook himself, but not even a single tissue paper could he find. “Well, then, I must have dropped it along the way. Summer robes are thin, and twilight was a busy time for me. I must have been careless, if I do say so myself, running home, although the way was short. Nevertheless, I need it not, nor do I lament its loss. But should someone find it on the road and press suit, the suspicion must fall, finally, on me. Perhaps it is within the gate,” he thought, and commenced walking every inch of the place.

As he did so, he accidentally set his foot on the conch shell, and was about to tread on it—he nearly tumbled backward, but he supported himself in time. “What is this?” he said, picking it up and looking at it. Then he turned his gaze toward the interior of the inn and reflected, “How thoughtless. That traveling ascetic was so enchanted with the flute that he forgot his shell—he left it where it was.

“When this conch was in the sea—when it was alive—it moved, but had no voice. Take its flesh out and keep the shell—it is a dead thing—but blow in it and its voice can be heard for acres roundabout. Is it not even thus with man? Let him lose his own place and drift to another, and he is like a fish taken from the water, unable to return. Let him, moreover, be brought low though without sin, let him hide: yet will he be found out, like the voiceless shell heard when blown upon. Yea, to hold the innocent guilty is to overturn order; to suffer accusation when one is not guilty is to be obedient to the pressure of power. In a world where prayer is never met with signs, to turn one’s gaze toward the skies in vain contemplation is for the mountain man on Yoshino, Mount All-Is-Well, whose name belies the fact: ’tis hard to enter it, that paradoxical peak with no clouds to clear.⁶ Ah, what shall I do?” he asked himself, hurling the shell away from him. Because he did not speak, with bulging eyes and feeling voice, these things, his breast began to give him pain: he placed his hand on his chest but had no place for all the rancor he felt.

He could not remain thus, and so he busied himself lighting a lamp and heading for the gate, that he might search for the sketch of Shino’s likeness. But as he did so, a clamorous cry was heard outside—“Everybody, come quick!”—and the wicket was pushed open with a bang. “Champion, are you in?” asked the first to thrust his face within, Karashirō of the Saltmakers’ Beach. He was accompanied by two men called Itagoki Kinta and Ushigane Mōroku, well-known local mischief makers. Now the trio squeezed themselves into a line on the wooden bench in the front of the inn.

Kobungo looked at them, then shook out his lamp and said, “A bold entrance you make. What do you want, the three of you together? Sit quietly—you disturb the floorboards.”

They would hardly let him speak, however. Karashirō flashed a hand towel and tossed it over his shoulder, saying, “Champion, we have something to say to you tonight; that is why these three buddhas have left their pedestal to visitate you. But first, will you not sit yourself down and worship us?”

Kinta, beside him, stopped him with, “Karashi, no need to blurt out japes like that. No, we have come, the three of us, for a bout or two of in-house evening practice. We will put our backs into it.”

Kinta glanced back, and Mōroku stepped forward to say, “Champion, we have all come here like this, together, to say none other than this. For many years now, Master, we have been your disciples, but our skills were great to begin with, and we have much natural strength. For this reason we have never flinched at crossroads wrestling matches, so that people began to praise you, saying that, truly, Inuta has good disciples, and you, Master, began to get a swelled head. Well, today was the last of it. ’Tis topsy-turvy, this floating world, when the disciples excommunicate the master, so let me tell you the reason. We three speak for everyone when we say that from now on, Master, you have not a single disciple here in Katsushika. Take this to heart. Beginning tomorrow we will not let you talk big. Never pretend you forgot.”

They rose from their seats and raised their voices then in a whine as of the cloud of mosquitos he swatted on his knees, a neat tattoo. Kobungo heard them out, then laughed them to scorn. “You croaking toads, can you not speak more quietly? Ever since I was an unshorn youth I have loved wrestling, but despite being called Champion, I never thought to make it my living. Truly, what does it matter if I have a few bumpkin disciples with amateurish skills? What do I lack if I lose them? If you feel you have reason, then do as you like, excommunicate me to my face. Tell me your reasons. Why do you do this?”

They knelt again, each with one knee raised. “We hardly need to tell you, ’tis so well-known. Everybody knows how you judged that set-to in the beach hamlet last night alone, in a way unbecoming one thought of as a gallant, and someone who saw from afar on a side road told someone else how Yamabayashi got his own back against you at Cape Shiori. News about a man runs a thousand leagues faster than the man himself can, like the proverb says.⁷ When he lifted his muddy shin and trod on you, our master, it soiled our faces. And so we excommunicate you. Did it not gall you? Forsooth, he is the husband of your younger sister—do you owe him money, maybe? You let him manhandle you, and you mewled like a cat—you kicked it under the dirt like cat dung, and the only thing that blooms that way is morning glories on the roadside. Master, you are now Inuta the Spineless. The judge’s fan that called you the victor in the Yawata match was wrong, it turns out. When it came down to it against Yamabayashi, you were like an octopus boiled in a tea kettle—you could not lift a hand to save yourself—you were bright red but knew no shame. If you had any stones, you would have hit him, you would have pushed him, no? Or else you would have bit your tongue and died, would you not?”

One said this in a loud ruffian’s brogue, gesturing as he spoke, and the flames from his mouth leapt to the others’ as well, starting a blaze, but Kobungo remained unperturbed. “Again, you are very noisy. I will not be hounded by a chorus of sparrows who know nothing of the phoenix’s aspirations when he beats a whirlwind with his wings. When I refused to oppose Fusahachi on Cape Shiori it was for my father’s sake, my own sake, and the sake of Fusahachi and his wife. Sometimes ’tis better to lose than to win. To step aside for an unprincipled blackguard, to let him pass, is no shame. Are there, unbeknownst to me, those who sneer at me for a coward? Let them be—they can do me no harm. I have heard your reasons, and now I have no further use for you. Begone, and quickly.”

So he sought to chase them off. They rose to their feet as one and said, “We will begone—what need for you to say it? We may have dissolved our master and discipleship, but we have face to consider among the people of this village, the doors of whose mouths will not be shut. No, we need an affidavit for later, stating that we are now strangers. We will put our eternal seal to it now.”

Karashirō brandished his fists, but Kobungo caught them and his legs and flipped him. Mōroku and Kinta charged at him next, but Kobungo twisted their arms even as he stepped firmly on the wriggling Karashirō’s back to prevent him standing again. Mōroku and Kinta stood on their toes and screwed up their faces as they gazed at the sky and cried, “Oh, that hurts! It hurts! You will pull our arms out! Let go, let go!”

Karashirō lent his voice to the chord, but his spinal cord was weakening with his voice; he lay spread-eagle, flattened, his eyes bulging, and said, “This is painful! ’Tis unendurable! Never mind them—what shall I do if my eyeballs pop out? My backbone is breaking!” But he could hardly scream, so bitter and thick was his voice—befitting well his briny nickname⁸—he gasped and licked the planks.

“It would serve you right,” scolded Kobungo, never loosening his grip. “Do you feel it in your bones yet? I restrain my anger by my father’s command: I only stop others’ fists, and never raise my own. For the sake of our former amity I forgive you, this one time. Now go at once.”

He spun Mōroku and Kinta about, pushed them together, and expelled them from the inn with a crash—they stumbled on shakily for a half-dozen yards or so, running and tripping over themselves. Then Kobungo pulled Karashirō to his feet, grasped him by the nape of his neck, and pushed him down again: Karashirō tottered off in the same direction on tangled legs before collapsing with the others. For some time they could not get up, but lay there looking around them like foxes, arching their backs like cats. Finally they got to their feet—they checked their pulses—rubbed their hips—smeared spittle on their kneecaps— grimaced—knit their brows—each catching his breath, they helped each other up, with assorted cries of “Ho!”

Karashirō clucked like a grasshopper chattering in its cage and grumbled, “Kinta, Mōroku, is the pain going away? See what happens when you try to brush up your gallantry? You might get punished, but you will never get saved. We came at a bad time.”

His two companions sighed, and Kinta tried to comfort him, saying, “It was not our turn. The seven hardships and the eight sufferings are our lot in this vale of tears. We lost with our strength, but won with our mouths. We still have somewhat to say, but perhaps we had better swallow it unspoken—along with a couple of pints of the local brew, to mend our spirits. Have courage!”

So saying, Kinta bent low and looked around him with a harried heart. “Hang on, hang on, I have dropped my balls.”

As he was saying this, something caught on Mōroku’s foot. He peered down at it, saying, “Here they are,” and handed Kinta a string of two hundred coins. Kinta handled them as he said, “Now, then,” and, like a thick-handled bow, bowing and arching his back, set off ahead of the others, who followed behind, into the night, black as leopard-flower seeds, as it was every night when they frequented their favorite tavern, under the sign of the Miwa cryptomeria⁹: thence their way they wended, as was their wont, and as they went their footsteps died, and all was left desolate.

Kobungo slammed open the lamp’s aperture and turned his attention outside. He heard the gate pulled shut with a bang and its single bolt shot, even as the village watch beat the fifth watch¹⁰ on his wood-blocks—earlier, it seemed to Kobungo in his present state of mind, than usual. He counted to himself, then nodded. “But the nights are short these days. It seems the sun just set, but then, alas, I wasted time trifling with those blackguards. Their useless clamor and shouting will have carried to the back room. From every direction I feel I am being watched,” he muttered to himself.

Endless were his worries as he sat, one leg crossed, one knee raised for him to embrace as his thoughts were filled with his father’s pitiful straits. “I wonder now how you will greet the dawn, if the place you are in is dark, if you can sleep, or if you lie awake, prey to mosquitos. I am sure the pain is as much as you can bear, but bear it this one night only, I pray you. I will sell the fields, sell the house, and raise the treasure to redeem you. If that is not enough I will even take your place—is there not some means of saving you? It is the one in the back room I cannot save. My late uncle had a method, passed down to him from of old, for preparing a wondrous cure for the tetanus. It is not, however, easy to procure: lifeblood I can take right now, by piercing my thigh and wringing out what I need, but it must be combined with the living blood of a girl, and I have none. I can wrack myself and break my body, and no good will it do. Perhaps I should place him on a boat and flee tonight in secret? Nay, the entrances to the village, both by water and land, have already been secured by troops, or so I have heard. I could cut my way through them and make good our escape, but ’twould put my father’s life in peril. Why, oh why does the sun in Heaven not shine on the true in heart? This one here is a paragon of filial piety, and my father is a paragon of righteousness. I myself know indeed a scrap or two about filiality and right, but good brings me no blessing, and righteousness only disaster. But I must not resent it. In this world happiness and unhappiness do not always stem from a person’s goodness or evil. When one knows Heaven’s decree then one’s aspirations will never waver, even at the cost of one’s head. But if I fail to come up with a plan quickly—by daybreak—then all these thoughts are as useless as a picture of rice-cakes to a hungry man. The man from Koga [meaning genpachi] is absent—I have no one to bargain with—’tis inconvenient—’tis inconvenient to stay here. What should I do?”

Thus did he question himself, answer himself, count his uncountable causes for sorrow, breaking his heart with the dawn as at dawn the hart cries—not so now, but the foot-and-eight resounded in the depths of the inn as the player amused himself with a wondrous air on the flute, cut from a single segment of bamboo just as this single night must soon be cut short—well aware was he of this, that on the morrow his friend’s heart’s hope would fall flat, unless he himself could borrow sharp wits and stop what was to come, or elide his troubles in a smooth glissando.

“How unfeelingly he plays, that ascetic, trading his conch for a flute and sounding it—’tis far too close, that detached room—the sound cannot be hid, and he cannot thereby be comforted, but only accompanied in his sorrow. Ah, the severality of this floating world!”

These thoughts he kept within his heart, and never spoke them, but within the little parlor at long last Shino raised himself. He faced the tiny flame and thought of whence he came and where he was bound, and as he pondered, this thought came to him: “Vain the dew on my pillow of grass, when I do what is not in my heart to do, entangle him to whom I owe a debt by simply sheltering beneath his roof. Inuta’s frustrations manifest themselves in his expression, and I have misgivings; what is more, the old man, master here, has been summoned to the Estatesman’s house and taken; evening passes, and he does not return, while people who we were not waiting for arrived in numbers and spoke in loud shouts; is not all of this upon my head? Ever since the loss of Rainmaker I have known my fate: by this illness I must wither like a flower in the shade. Had I known such hardship would ensue, I gladly should have laid down ’neath the blade and died. How can I inflict such suffering upon such a true-hearted father and son?

“I do not cling in the least to life, and yet if Sōsuke, Gakuzō, heard of this, he would not be pleased. I pity Hamaji, too. The heart of a girl, depending on a life to come like the jewel-like camellia, impervious to eight thousand years¹¹—will it not turn to hatred, to lamentation? Nor is it they alone who concern me: mayhap Genpachi and Kobungo will one day say I was thoughtless to recklessly hasten the end of a life they saved. The tiger dies, but leaves his skin: a man dies, and what he leaves is his name. To fail to die when it is time to die is to be shamed, to be shunned by the world.

“That foot-and-eight is playing for me the shanty of the boat of Amitabha’s charity, the music for the bodhisattvas’ dance. If I can see that, hear that, then surely I have strength enough to grip my blade when my time comes. I have made my preparations firm: my heart is pure as flowing water that shall ne’er return, except for one regret: that, although I never set my heart against the parting words of my late, lamented father, his exalted spirit, as against an enemy, my oafish errors led me to this state, suspected of ambitions, doubted as a spy, ending my life as a fugitive: that this would stain my fathers’ name I fear, for ever after. A crime against filial duty cannot be expiated in nine lifetimes. This is the only grudge that I bear death, and it may be a karmic reward for my past lives’ evil deeds: this is the Buddha’s interpretation, that my confusion is but tormenting passions, and if I separate myself from being and nothingness, consign myself to that which truly is, then dying and living both are but as fate would have them. Forgive me, please.”

What he would say broke in him like a cataract over rocks, nor had he the heart to draw out his life along with the threads of suffering that e’er rounded back to him upon their skeins; was the urgent rancor of this man, this mighty man, known beyond his walls? The foot-and-eight played on, its varied airs amusing the player as the fifth watch went half past, and the half-moon yielded to a cylinder-lantern, shining on the blinds of a palanquin that was pulled up and placed outside the inn.

Escorting it was a widow who had more years than Wu bamboo has joints, forty at least. Her still-black hair she had unsentimentally cut and she wore it in a boyish style, pinned back with an unobtrusive bodkin; nor were her clothes eye-catching, a thin robe of unpatterned gauze layered over a white singlet and tied in front with a sash of satin accompanied by another of Han crimson, around her willow waist, like the trailing tail of the male mountain pheasant.

Gazing up at the long eaves she made her way through the gate, approached the inn, and cried, “Let me speak!”

She slid the wicket open and Kobungo, taken aback, raised his head to look at her. “Why, if it is not Toyama Myōshin! How unexpected. Do you come alone, and this late at evening? What brings you here?”

She smiled and nodded. “Nay, I am not alone. I have brought Nui and Daihachi, but as I thought darkness might take us on the way, I made them ride in the sedan. I suffer from the bloodflow ailment, which makes it better for me to walk than to be buffeted about in a sedan; besides, the paths at night are cool. ’Tis no good thing that has brought me here, and with an escort; I am an uninvited guest, no matter how intimate our connection, and no doubt you think me an untimely one as well. Pray, open the great door,” she said.

Seeing that nothing would come between her and her object, Kobungo wondered to himself “why so many people came by tonight, at such a bad time,” but he could not say such a thing to her openly, and so he received her as if nothing were the matter. “You are very welcome. Please, come this way.”

He offered her the seat of honor while he finally pushed the great door open from the inside. The sedan-bearers set up palanquin stands in the dirt-floored entryway of the inn, and then carried the sedan in and set it down laterally along the edge of the wooden floor. When they raised the blind, Kobungo could see Nui, with Daihachi fast asleep on her knee.

She wore a single-layer seersucker robe over a scarlet underrobe, and her sash was of a blackened-tea–colored damask in a faux Katano style, single knotted; her lustrous tortoise-shell combs and bodkins were of the Kamakura style, not at all rusticated. Gaudy though she was, for nineteen she looked old, a doe with fawn at night, and if one met her in the fall parting would have brought such pain at heart as now was shown forth in her countenance as out of the palanquin she heaved herself.

Shaken awake, Daihachi whimpered once, and she shifted him in her arms, gently patting him on the back, and said, “My elder brother, how fare you in this heat? And is our honored father healthy and well?” But when she bowed her head she looked like one stricken with an illness, and one of her bodkins fell with a thud to the floor. “The parting comb¹²?” she wailed, and turned her back so as not to reveal her tears; she took her mother-in-law’s back for a shield and hid herself in the darkness behind her.

Then Toyama Myōshin turned to the sedan-bearers and said, “Now, then, you men, I shall return tonight, although it may be almost midnight when I do. I think it must be cool beside that hedgerow yonder, facing south. Await me there a while.”

They all took her meaning, and, carrying the sedan outside, they pulled the great door shut once again, took their leave, and then closed the wicket, too, from outside.

After a little while, Myōshin turned to Kobungo and said, “Well, then, Elder Brother, has your father gone to his bedroom? This heat is unendurable, and so I wonder how he fares—if he is well. Every year I attend the washing of the god-bier along with my daughter-in-law and grandson, but yesterday I had so many things to attend to that I could not get away no matter how much I wished to. Are the girls not in?”

The leaves of her speech promised flowers, but Kobungo’s suspicions were like clouds on a rainy night that cover the moon and will not disperse. With knitted brow he said, “No. The old man was invited to Mama, and he has not yet returned. The girls have gone for homecoming. There is an ascetic staying in a back room, and that is all. You have come at a bad time: the place is deserted, and I have scant entertainment to offer you. The cupboard is bare, not even a breeze. Pray stay here a while and talk with me. You must have a reason, and no ordinary one at that, for bringing Nui along, when ladies normally shun traveling at night.”

Thus he returned her question. Myōshin smoothed her collar and inched forward on her knees. “It is indeed as you have guessed. This is rather difficult for me to say. Matters between men and women do not always go as their parents might wish; this is true for noble and commoner alike. Now a couple that has enjoyed happy intimacy for years, that produced a grandchild so quickly as to give their mother a pleasant old age and happiness to inspire jealousy in those around her, has turned that joy to shame through verbal altercations, husband with wife, so that a bride by no means despised must be divorced from her husband. It is this I have come to talk about, though I think I have come to be despised. Can any but the gods know the pain in my heart?

“It all began with the wrestling match at Yawata some days ago. Fusahachi has been in a foul temper ever since losing to you—to Nui’s elder brother. Imagine this child’s distress at being unable to comfort him when, after a day or two had passed, Fusahachi—oh, what was he thinking?—shaved his forelocks and vowed never to wrestle again. Then yesterevening there was that sudden trouble at the beach, in the settling of which your judgement was not uncapable, and the root of which was his ungovernable anger, but it was a bad beginning, and Fusahachi grew exceeding wrathful, saying that his wife must leave so that this confusion could be sorted out in a way transparent to all. So ill-considered are his words that his parent’s remonstrations have no effect. Their go-between passed on last autumn, leaving no one else who can persuade him now.

“So it is that I accompany her, doing a duty that is not a mother’s, that she might not be returned with no explanation. Ah, the weakness of a woman’s fate, that cannot win over a man! And ah, the duties owed to a floating world of suffering, tangled like hempen threads that cannot stitch together cloth of kudzu, the underside of whose leaves hides resentment that tears apart a fabric woven of long years of custom and use. Poor adorable Nui, a husk locust that can only cry: I know how true at heart she is, but no good it does. Comforting her, I helped her into the sedan.

“Then along came Daihachi, crying for his mother, and with good reason, though what bird told him of it I know not. He clung to her sleeve—she shook him off—she could not leave, and he would not let her leave. Four he is, but born in winter, the twelfth month, and so he is young for his age¹³—he still has not given up the breast—he is but a tiny shoot of grass—how can he grow outside the shade of his mother grove? We had no choice: we let him ride with her in the palanquin, we brought him here—how happy he was to be hurrying along toward his grandpapa’s house, to show his grandpapa he was wearing his best clothes—perhaps his grandpapa would have a present for him—no other thoughts than these kept the babe dancing on his mother’s knee—a heart so lacking in guile must belong to a god, or to a holy man. His mother’s lap became his bed as we made our way here, his sleep a floating bridge of dreams that ne’er knew the lamentation of collapse; that ignorance does lamentation bring, as, though seeds of tears are left unsown, the sad event shoots forth frond memories. A woman’s complaints are like a spinning wheel: ’round they go and ’round they come again, but little answer are they for divorce. Oh intercede, I pray: tell your father about these things,” she said, sniffing back tears.

Her mother-in-law’s leaves of speech glistened as though bedecked with dew, but Nui sank ’neath sobs. Kobungo listened intently, sighed, and said: “You have stated your plaint in great detail, Mother, and I believe I have understood the greater part of it. If Nui has any thoughts to add, anything she would say, lo, I would hear it. Indeed, your words have deep import beyond what you have said, do they not? Tell me, now.”

In answer to this query she at long last raised her head. “I have heard that women are subject to the Five Obstacles and the Three Submissions,¹⁴ and so I never stood up to my man, no matter how unreasonable his words, and in four years he never raised his voice to scold me. I straitened my heart, and so within the household seas ne’er wind nor wave arose. I took the tiller firmly, day and night, kept the logbook faithfully, and ne’er left to others the work that got us by. Never did I rest within the gates of my accustomed home by the riverside, but never did I think to leave, or to be made to leave, until I died, although the pillars of that house should rot away. But what I never thought was that when I must needs return, leaving without tiring or being tired of, the threshold to my father’s house should have become so high. All I wish is for the two of you to soften your hearts toward one another, for the storm clouds that roil within each of your breasts to retreat to their respective mountain peaks. Let that be done and the darkness in which I wander, this rain of tears, shall quickly pass me by; my sleeves shall dry forthwith. It matters not to me if I am struck or wounded, nor what manner of suffering I must endure. I spurn no shame—I shall not resent. If only you would give me the right answer, it would to me be greater joy than e’en provender after ten days’ fast, or knowing my life had been lengthened to a thousand years.” So recklessly fell her tears that they damped the sleeves of the child she held on her knee; one of his hands was unable to move, but the other wearily tried to smooth the lump in her throat from weeping.

Kobungo then unfolded his arms and fixed his gaze, made sharper by the lantern’s firelight, on Myōshin. “Mother, I understand the greater part of the circumstances of this separation. There is, however, a difficulty. Nui is my father’s daughter. It was not by my will that she was made Fusahachi’s bride. This house is my father’s. For me to accept the terms of this sundrance while my father is gone would be to turn my back on what is proper. What is more, Daihachi, infant though he is, should not be kept with his mother. I know not whether my father will be back this evening, or if he will stay away tomorrow or even the day after tomorrow. With the day of his return so unsettled, I cannot allow anyone, even my sister, to stay here even one night. Take her home tonight, I pray you, and come again on a day when my father is at home. What know I of any of this?”

Wrathfully, he tried to leave, but Myōshin tugged at his sleeve, saying, “Honored Brother, you misspeak yourself. Calm yourself and listen, I pray you.” She pulled him to his seat again, then blew her nose and continued. “People say ’tis a wonder of the world when a mother-in-law and a bride get along well, but Nui is staunch in all things, more attentive to filial duty than Fusahachi. Indeed, she is more unobjectionable to me than he, and therefore how long can I watch idly while he sends her away? Sundrance is according to a husband’s will: once settled, may not there be a way to mollify it?

“This is your father’s house, is it not, although he himself is gone? I am bringing your father’s daughter back to her father’s house: ’tis your part, as caretaker in his absence, to let her in. And Daihachi—since birth his left fist has not been as other people’s—he cannot grip things with it. Perhaps you think he was sent back here with his mother for being a cripple, superfluous, but a crippled grandchild inspires eight times as much love. I bring him back with his mother in the hope that Fusahachi, out of attachment to his son, will bend his fierce heart and summon him back, along with his wife. Unless I believed that, how could I, as his grandmother, who has never been apart from him for so much as a day, leave him here, as if he were a flower in my hair or a jewel in my hand—how could I go away alone?—where could I go?

“Never mind his fist: his mind is agile for his age, and oh, how he has grown! His height is nothing less than one would see in boys of six or seven. That is why the village children nicknamed him Daihachi, ‘Great Eight.’ They never call him by the true name his grandfather gave to him. Indeed, our household has become accustomed to it; and yet, this epithet ‘Daihachi’ comes originally from a cart: it is a riddle meaning ‘cripple,’ as we later discerned to our dismay, but though we determined to quit using it, the habit would never heal.¹⁵ And indeed, the name names the thing. For four years we have concentrated all our thoughts on how his fist might become like other people’s, but to no avail the physickings, the wards and incantations, the pleas to gods and buddhas. I tell you of these useless things at such great length to show to you that there is nothing in my heart but truth. If you doubt that—if you would not keep Daihachi—then let him be a traveler, let me pay his lodging fee, let your living sway you, and give him room, milord, I pray of you. Nor is his a solitary journey. Would you refuse mother and child, traveling companions?”

She spoke with manly persuasion, a current of words never stagnant, never muddied by the sadness of her heart that would not clear, each phrase a step across the ford: the mother of a boat captain indeed was she.

From the start, Kobungo had thought only of Shino, and of how this evening’s difficulties tied his hands: “Even if she is my sister, how can I let her stay here if it means telling her my secret? I must say something to send her away.” Now Myōshin attacked him with reason and persuasion, but he would not submit. He laughed her to scorn, saying, “How clever your words! I am an innkeeper, but even if they are travelers come to rent a room, ’tis late in the evening, and we have none to offer. To turn away a traveler there is no room to lodge is hardly a thing unheard of. But if I say that, perhaps you will bid me keep Nui, and send Daihachi back with his grandmother. Her father’s house this may be, but where is the writ of divorcement, if she is to be returned? Without it, her stay here can be but a private matter, and even between brother and sister, the distinction between man and woman obtains. To let my youthful sister stay the night here, in a house with none others besides, would be like adjusting my shoes in the melon patch¹⁶: I should feel self-conscious, though I am her brother. Stretch a point and take her back this evening, and come again with the writ of farewell.”

Hardly had he spoken when Myōshin gave an unexpected laugh. “Ah-hah!” she said. “So you would reject her for some babble about wanting a writ of divorcement! What husband, even completely unlettered, would send his wife away without giving her a writ of divorcement? It was only out of feeling that I did not bring it out. Once I hand it over, what is sundered may never be joined again. Here is that writ of divorcement.”

So saying, she produced a letter from between the folds of her sash and laid it down close to Kobungo. He took it up, looked at it, opened it—it was not a writ of farewell, but the likeness of Inuzuka Shino that he had dropped by the wayside. Confusion and astonishment assailed him—his troubles were redoubled as if mirrored. But though he recognized that clear image, no sign of perturbation did he give, but rolled it up and set it down again, saying: “Dubiously written. Was it Fusahachi’s doing or yours, transforming the proverbial three-and-a-half lines of the writ of divorcement into this likeness?”

Myōshin met his accusation with a stare. “Do not play dumb, Lord Inuta, when you yourself know all about it. The Koga Lord’s urgent search for this Inuzuka Shino person, and his stern proclamation that not only any who shelter him but their relations and connections, too, shall be held guilty of a crime, must surely have reached here as well as our village of Ichikawa. Considering this, you cannot say Fusahachi had no reason to send his wife away. If you accept that writ of farewell and keep Nui, as well as Daihachi, here with you, then I will feel I have accomplished my aim in escorting them here. If you will not accept that writ of farewell, then I shall take you with me to the Estatesman’s house, and in his court of petition we will separate the right from the wrong as one parts the reeds at Naniwa. Is that what you would prefer?”

“No! Why would I prefer that?”

“Then will you accept Nui?”

“Nor can I do that.”

“Then shall we take that writ of farewell and petition with it? Which will it be?”

Thus she pressed him, and Kobungo, at his wits’ end, nodded. “Do not be so hasty, Mother. I accept the writ of farewell. I will keep Nui here, and Daihachi as well, for tonight. An answer, yea or nay, must await my father’s return: tell Fusahachi that, please. Now it is late. You must hurry home.”

This speech gave Myōshin to know that Kobungo’s resistance might bend, like a bough under blossoms as welcome as his words, or even break, like the fragile dewdrop tears that now fell upon her sleeve as she wiped her eyes. “You understand, then? It is only for our own selves’ sake that we say to each other things we do not mean in our hearts. I harbor no resentment, but bitter indeed is our lot in this floating world. Three years ago, in the autumn, I was left behind here by my late husband—I cut short my hair and assumed the likeness of a nun, with unbound raven tresses—I took ‘Myōshin’ as my name in the precepts, writing it in red because I am not yet dead—I even received a lineage.¹⁷ But my child and his wife are yet young, and in guarding them I have not been able to abandon this floating world: morning and evening I face our household altar with no time to read sutras—day after day boats go out and come in, and I must deploy our boatmen and unload the cargo. I run the household, and so when people call me by my original name, Toyama, I may tell them that, nay, I have changed it to Myōshin, but they soon forget—some call me Toyama, some Myōshin, so that my lay and Buddhist names have become joined, and I am come to be called Toyama Myōshin, of all the foolish things. When fate brings people together as husband and wife—when we come to be called daughter-in-law and mother-in-law—then if we cannot follow this fate from root to branch it must be because of a promise of the God of Joining. We cannot know just by gazing at a person if he is good or evil at heart, and so people will say that a demoniacal old woman drove out a bride without so much as a hare’s hair of a flaw. But this plaint is profitless. I shall retire, then. Do not, Nui, from the constraint of your heart take sick and make work for your father and brother. Do not let Daihachi push aside his bedclothes, hot as they may look on a summer’s night, or he will get chilly while sleeping and catch a cold. Do not let him suffer.”

Hearing these words of care, Nui wiped her eyes, swollen from weeping, then raised her head and said, “For years I have received boons from you and have shown little filiality in return, and now, it seems, chance parts us. It seems to be midnight already. It pains my heart to let you go, so far away—no longer are our homes one.” Thus she began, but she was as unable to hold back her tears as she was to hold back Myōshin from leaving. Each strove to comfort the other in this hour of parting both regretted.

Then the sound of a foot-and-eight, played in idleness, caught Myōshin’s ear. “That flute—it plays ‘The Nestling Crane.’¹⁸ The pheasant in the burning field,¹⁹ the crane at night—indeed, every living thing knows the sorrow of parting from a mate, the love and duty of a parent and child. Which of these may we count as foolish? For every meeting there must be a parting, and if there be joy, how can there not be sorrow?”

Thus taking courage, she put away her tears and taking leave of Kobungo she rose like a snipe from a swamp, with dripping wings, but not a drop to muddy the waters to which Kobungo committed her as he, the elder brother, saw her wordlessly off, while younger sister loudly sobbed. Their hearts were as constrained as the wicket in the many-bracéd door that Myōshin now threw open and stepped through.

“Hail, hail!” she cried, and her sedan-bearers hurriedly brought her sedan back and set it down, urging, “Will you ride?” Without a look back she shook her head. “’Tis the night of the twenty-second, and the moon about to rise dyes the heavens and tells how late is the night: how can we return to Ichikawa now? I anticipated this, and arranged lodgings for the night nearby. Follow me, quickly now.”

This information gave she them in secret. They slung the palanquin between them and hastened off toward a district in the east, where a gauzy red was drawing on, but her mood was of a traveler who must tread a foot-bedragging mountain path, and hardly could she make herself advance, but lost her way in private rains and joined her dewy sleeves; she alone inclined her head and pondered as she went.

1. In Shinto mythology, Susanoo is the brother of Amaterasu, the sun goddess. Susanoo is considered a god of storms and the sea, and in the myths he behaves in a wild and unrestrained manner. He is also identified with the Ox-Headed Heavenly God worshiped in the Gion Festival. See Chapter XXXII, note 12.

2. Today this instrument is known internationally as a shakuhachi. Its name means “foot and eight-tenths,” referring to its length. Bakin uses the phrase shakuhachi no fue, “foot-and-eight flute,” suggesting that what has become the name of the instrument was in his usage more of a description. Thus the translation.

3. A hitoyogiri, a flute made from a single segment of bamboo.

4. See Chapter XXIII, note 5.

5. See Chapter XIX, note 8.

6. “Paradoxical peak” translates jungyaku no mine, a shugendō term that is used for wordplay here as well as significance. Ōmine, a shugendō sacred peak, was held to be approachable from Kumano (the front or jun) or Yoshino (the back or gyaku); thus climbing Ōmine was called jungyaku no mineiri, or “entering the peak from before or behind.” Jungyaku also means “paradox,” however, a meaning Kobungo’s soliloquy exploits.

7. Perhaps a variation on the proverb akuji senri o hashiru, “bad news runs a thousand leagues” (i.e. bad news travels fast).

8. The first element in Karashirō is kara, meaning “spicy” or “salty,” which has a metaphorical meaning similar to the English “bitter;” his epithet (“of the Saltmakers’ Beach”) exploits this association.

9. A ball of dried cryptomeria leaves hung as a sign on a tavern, also known as a sakabayashi (sake grove).

10. The last watch before dawn.

11. Legend held that the camellia (or a mythical variety thereof) lived for eight thousand years.

12. See Chapter XXVI, note 5.

13. See Chapter XVII, note 6.

14. The Five Obstacles to a woman’s salvation are enumerated in Chapter 12 of the Lotus Sutra (they involve her inability to be reborn in five exalted states, including Buddhahood). The Three Submissions, referred to in various sutras, represent the idea that a woman should be subject to her father, then her husband, and then her son.

15. A daihachiguruma was a large two-wheeled cart drawn by human hand. Various explanations have been given for why such a cart was known as a “Great Eight,” including the suggestion that the name was derived from that of its inventor. The villagers’ association of invalids with carts may come from the practice of improvising wheelchairs (perhaps from daihachiguruma) but may also be a form of wordplay, as one way of writing the word katawa (translated as “cripple”) was with the characters for “single wheel.” That is, they may have been teasing Daihachi by calling him a two-wheeled cart when in fact he was one-wheeled.

16. See Chapter XXV, note 4.

17. That is, she took a posthumous Buddhist name while yet alive; such names typically assimilated the deceased into the status of monk or nun. Myōshin is stating that she was even placed into a lineage of priestly succession.

18.Tsuru no sugomori, a traditional shakuhachi piece understood to depict a crane building a nest and then raising a chick until it leaves the nest.

19. Pheasants nest in fields, and the plight of the pheasant when farmers burn stubble from a field has made it a common poetic image for bereavement or anxiety.