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

Volume II, Book IV

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

Chapter XVII

Girding himself with jealous hatred, Hikiroku takes in a stray;

Steeling himself with filial piety, Shino performs ablutions under a waterfall

Thus it was that Inuzuka Bansaku saw the fulfillment of a desire he had cherished for many years: the birth of a son. Now that both mother and child were in the soundest of health, and the birthing hut had been cleared away, he spoke to his wife Tatsuka, saying, “Well, then: what shall we call the boy?”

Tatsuka considered for a time, and then replied, “One hears of a few people, among the many who have been unable to raise children past infancy, who, if their child was a boy, made as if he were a girl, and if it was a girl, gave her a boy’s name, and were then able to see the child grow up safe from harm. You and I have been unhappy enough to conceive three sons only for them all to be stillborn, and now that we have another son, my heart quails, and I have been visited by all manner of imaginings. I think this child will be safe if we raise him as a girl until he reaches the age of fifteen. Let him be named accordingly, I pray you.”

Bansaku smiled broadly at her. “ ‘Life and death are ordained by Heaven,’¹ and cannot be blamed on names. The course you propose is one I find it hard to believe in—it smacks of the superstitions of the vulgar, with all of their prohibitions and abstentions—but if it will bring some relief to your mind, then perhaps it is no bad thing to follow vulgar ways. ‘Shino’ is an ancient word meaning ‘long.’ The Japanese Glossary² reads the Chinese changgan, long-shafted bamboo, as shinome, from the same ancient word. Indeed, even now, long-eared silvergrass is called shino-susuki; it is commonly thought that this means ‘thick-growing’ silvergrass, but that is not so. Perhaps we should call our child Shino, in celebration of what we hope will be his long life.³ Long ago, when I met you under such mysterious circumstances, it was on the Mino road, and it was on the Shinano road that we became husband and wife: ‘Shino’ and ‘Shinano’ are similar in sound. As the old poem says, the Viet bird nests on south-leaning limbs; the Hun horse neighs into the north wind.⁴ Who can forget his origins? If our son should ever rise in the world and have territories of his own, perhaps he will be made Protector of Shinano, and fulfill the promise of our blessing. What think you of this name?”

Tatsuka could hardly wait for his careful reasoning to end before she responded: “It is a very auspicious name. Wealthy folk hold revels of fifty or even a hundred days in rejoicing over a successful birth. The least we can do on the occasion of the naming of our child is to offer sake to the hearth god, and give our pupils in reading and spinning something to eat.”

Bansaku nodded. “Indeed, those were my thoughts exactly. Quickly, then,” he said, urging her into action. Tatsuka hired some of the women in the neighborhood and they busied themselves making red bean rice and immersed themselves in making small fry soup and vinegar salad out of fish from Shiba, and then they called together all the village’s unshorn youth to take their seats at trays heaped high with food amid adorning reddish leaves of oak. The children, hair in knots behind their heads, then lifted up their chopsticks and their bowls, the latter big enough to hide behind. At last the moment came when all emerged in utter satisfaction from this feast to laud the future path of their hosts’ son: the children stood, not bothering to glean the grains of rice that on their knees had spilled, and some left straightaway after expressing their joy, while many only hurried on their way ’midst much commotion after joining in a tussle over who his shoes of straw could claim and don before the others did.

Thenceforth Tatsuka always dressed Shino in girl’s clothing, and when he reached the age of three or four, and his hair was long and thick enough, she taught him to wear bodkins in it; and as she always addressed him as Shino, those who knew no better thought this child must be a girl. This made Hikiroku and Kamezasa, every time they saw or heard of it, clap their hands and laugh in scorn, saying, “What parent in all the world is not proud to have produced a son? Why, then, does this masterless samurai, this drifter, wish he had a girl? He himself fled from the Battle of Yūki, but a bit too late—he was wounded in the back—does it bother him so much that he is determined to keep his son from seeing warfare even in his dreams? Is that what drives this almighty tomfoolery? He is an even greater blackguard than we had thought.”

Thus did they curse and exercise their wit upon Bansaku, but there were none who joined in their laughter or even nodded in acknowledgment of their points, for indeed the villagers all loved Shino: They gave him presents, took it in turn to hold him, and lent his mother a helping hand whenever they could. Hikiroku and Kamezasa’s jealousy at this knew no bounds, and what exacerbated their envy was that Kamezasa had proven to be no exception to the proverb that a lascivious woman is as barren as a stone: she was over forty years of age, and had yet to bear a child.

She and her husband conferred on the point frequently, and settled on the course of adopting a daughter. They found a person to act as a go-between, and were duly informed that “A certain retainer of the Nerima [the nerima clan of musashi were the family of toshima saemon, he who was called heizaemon of nerima] has a daughter, only two years old this year. He has decided to put her from him—he is forty-two, she is his second child, and he promises never to see her again as long as they live, if it so be that he can adopt her out to a household of suitable lineage, to whom she shall bring seven strings of Yongle cash.⁵ The girl has the most adorable eyes and nose, and passed through an exceptionally mild case of the smallpox this spring, leaving her as a gem without flaw. What is more, as she was born in the first month, she is, at two, what is called old for her age,⁶ meaning there will be no difficulty in raising her without a wetnurse. Pray take her.”

Hikiroku and Kamezasa smiled at each other when they heard the go-between’s advice, and unconsciously inched forward a bit where they knelt. When the go-between had finished, they exchanged a look and said, “In a world harsher than the salt the sea-folk burn on the shore,⁷ seven strings of Yongle cash is no small gift for a child to bring. If there be no falsehood in what you have told us just now, sir, then it is just what we have desired. See to the arrangements, and quickly, I pray you.” They answered as one, and the man, accepting it, hurried on his way.

Thus it was that after five or six days the matter was concluded, with the go-between facilitating the exchange of affidavits between Hikiroku and the father of the child. Finally the girl, with the seven strings of cash, was sent to Ōtsuka, whereupon Kamezasa took her in her arms. First she gazed intently at the girl’s face and then uncurled the child’s hands and feet, without regard for her cries, and examined them back and front, before cackling, “People speak of a woman uniting all thirty-two aspects of beauty⁸—I confess I know not what they are, but this child is a real find, I say. Look at her!”

She held the child out to Hikiroku, who said in reassuring tones, “Now there, be a good girl and cry no more. Let me give you something.” He thrust his hand into his sleeve and withdrew some confections in the shape of cherry blossoms and maple leaves, which indeed elicited from this child (who knew not that these parents were not her own) an aural expression of filial piety—they silenced her crying as effectively as any gag on any monkey, or the proverbial “four in the morning, three at night.”⁹

It is true that even the most stiff-necked and grasping of people, when they find a thing to call their own, can so drown in affection for it, to the point of obliviousness to the jeers of others, that it becomes painful to watch. This was the case with Hikiroku and Kamezasa now, and superadded to this was that which was ever on their jealous minds, the desire to tweak Bansaku’s and Tatsuka’s noses. They named their adopted daughter Hamaji, and dressed her in finery above her station. Kamezasa, though a woman of the advanced age of forty, wrapped herself in silks after the Kamakura style and went out several times a month on excursions to this mountain or visits to that holy place, with maids to hold the baby and menials to go before her. In her expenditure of money and time she took no notice of the scorn she aroused. Furthermore, when her daughter reached the age for her hair-laying, and then her sash-loosening,¹⁰ Kamezasa dressed her in gorgeous robes ten times the length needed for one of her height, set her on the shoulders of a sturdy man, and paraded her about for all to see, on the excuse of visiting the shrine to their lares. Those who were skilled at flattery praised Kamezasa, and sent candy to the house unstintingly, as if to say she was a sweet mother. Such was the manner of Hamaji’s raising that from the time she was old enough to move on her own, her parents selected for her teachers, masters of instruments both string and wind, and kept her at playing or dancing from morning until night, without regard for their neighbors. They cultivated in her every manifestation of feminine charm, and this so compounded the extraordinary natural-born beauty of her features as to cause many to remark, in furtive praise of her, that it was as if a kite had a falcon for a child. Hamaji’s parents smiled when they heard this, not noticing the intended slight to them, and in their pride began to say, “We will have no husband for her save one of rank, wealth, and power.”

We leave them to rejoin Inuzuka Bansaku’s only child Shino, who, having already reached the age of nine, was a strapping, strong-thewed lad. Indeed, he was a full measure taller than a normal boy of eleven or twelve, and even while being made to wear girl’s clothes, he excelled at such boisterous play as kite flying, sparrow archery, rock fighting, and bamboo-horse equestrianism. Quite of his own volition he preferred the martial arts over other amusements, and Bansaku grew fonder and fonder of him. In the mornings he made Shino practice writing with the other unshorn youth of the village, while in the evenings he instructed the boy in the parsing of Confucian texts and war chronicles; on occasion, as an experiment, he would teach Shino a little swordsmanship or hand-to-hand fighting,¹¹As this was the path the boy loved best, his progress in these skills was so fast as to leave even his father tongue-tied, and yet touched with hope for his son’s future.

Such were Shino’s father’s thoughts. But his mother Tatsuka saw her child’s great cleverness—the filial feeling that sprang so naturally from his breast and manifested itself so clearly in his behavior—his prowess in the way of the brush, and his martial attainments, so far beyond his years as to bring praise and honor to his parents—and she feared lest his life should be short. Everything worried her, everything made her uneasy in her heart; she remonstrated with her husband, and restrained her child, saying, “To learn is not a bad thing, but you must only do what is commonly done.” But Shino, in his heart, was not as other boys. Not a day went by when he did not take up his bamboo sword—although he had to evade his mother’s gaze to do it.

He even took it into his head to learn to ride a horse, but this being the country, the only horses around were pack-horses, and they could not be borrowed. However, the puppy that Shino’s mother had brought back with her from her visit to the grotto at the River Taki before Shino’s birth had grown up along with him, and was now ten years of age. This hound’s dorsum was blacker than ink, while his belly and feet were snow white, a pattern that in horses is known as yotsushiro, and so he came to be called Yoshiro, and then Yoshirō,¹² as he became much attached, over the years, to Shino. So well did he heel to Shino’s will, never showing ill temper even when struck, that when Shino placed ropes on him as bridle and reins and climbed onto his back, the hound immediately understood what his master had in mind, and pawed the ground and trotted around in a circle several times. All who saw this stopped and stared, astonished at how properly Shino sat his mount, how expertly he twitched the reins, despite having never been taught; some clutched their sides in laughter at the unseemly contrast between the skills displayed and the spectacle created by their display, but many exclaimed in awe that the appearance the boy presented marked him as no ordinary person.

Indeed, it takes a jeweler to distinguish a true gem from a worthless rock. The unshorn youth of the village, when they saw Shino devote himself so to the brave, valiant arts while dressed in girl’s clothing, pointed at him and laughed him to scorn, even mocking him as one with “no stones.” Shino, for his part, paid them no mind, thinking only, “They are but peasant children, unworthy as enemies even in play—’twould be profitless to dispute with them.” He avoided them, and thus managed to abstain from any quarreling with them. He did, however, begin to wonder “why I alone, among all the children, am made to wear these girlish robes,” but in the press of affairs he never inquired about it of his parents, and since, after all, he was accustomed to girl’s clothes, having known only their touch on his skin since infancy, he never showed the slightest embarrassment over them.

This was how things stood when autumn came, and Tatsuka became indisposed with an illness that confined her to her sickbed: needles, moxa, and medicinal foods all proved ineffective. As winter arrived she grew daily weaker. Bansaku was greatly worried, and went about by day with knitted brow, while at night his eyelids hardly drooped in sleep. Shino spent his mornings going back and forth to a physician, and the remainder of his day in offering his mother hot medicinal draughts, kneading her waist, and talking to her of this and that in an effort to comfort her in her enforced idleness; unbidden tears would well up in his eyes. When his mother saw his helplessness, she felt it as a pressure on her chest, and sympathy would bring from her, too, tears, which then she strove to hide as coming from abdominal distress, and rubbed her side. Mother and son were constantly in each other’s thoughts—each one’s heart filled with a picture of the other’s filial duty and affection, perfectly clear although unspoken.

Early on one such matin, after Shino had hastened off to get some medicine for her, Bansaku knelt by his wife’s pillow, carefully adding salt to some gruel in a little pot and stoking the fire with the breeze from a half-opened fan he held. Now Tatsuka raised her head a little and said, “It pains my heart no end, my husband, to see you toiling at the hearth, tending the fire, unsteadily fetching water—tasks that are never yours—yea, and to see how Shino, though not yet ten, has lately become so very grown up, for he hardly even shuts his eyes at night for serving his mother. And yet it seems that, despite the stalwart care of my mate and my child, I must soon bid them farewell, as I travel the road we all must take at last.

“In the first place, this illness of mine is not, I fear, without a cause. Shino came to us originally as an answer to prayer, and was accompanied by signs and wonders of thus and such a nature. Such a provenance notwithstanding, he is our only son, and possesses a wisdom so far beyond his years as to put his parents to shame. I have never been able to forget his older brothers whom we lost, stillborn, and I have always dreaded that Shino’s life, too, might be cut short—you know my worries on that score have been with me always. And so I have prayed to the gods and buddhas at the grotto at the River Taki, that, if indeed Shino be subject to an ineluctable karma that should prevent him growing up, my life might be exchanged for his—and it would seem that my petitioning all these years has not been in vain, for Shino, ever since he was in swaddling clothes, has never suffered colds nor hint of worms; the god of pestilence ignored him, sent him smallpox only in its mildest form; and once the plagues of infancy had passed, he passed the mountain pass of his seventh year, said to be so brutal to boys: and so, if I slough off this coil this year, it will be willingly that I exchange my life for the fulfillment of all my prayers and vows for my son’s future; ’tis only parting from him I regret.

“But though he lose and lack forevermore the mother who had nursed him as a babe, he still shall have his father in the world, and with his light to banish darkness he shall grow. And since I am not long, I think, for this vale of tears, wherefore should we waste our substance on these medicinal draughts? It will profit us nothing. Get rid of them, I pray you.” Her tears began to fall even before she had finished speaking, and though her words bespoke a readiness for the further attenuation of that thread of breath that tied her to life, her frailty was as the butterfly’s in autumn, who, in the extremity of weakness, perches on a sleeve where dew of tears has turned to frost, and one wing’s lost.

And that was how her husband felt, as sigh and exclamation ’scaped his lips. “How peculiar and mistaken are these things I hear! ’Tis not so! You say you would exchange your life for your son’s—were such an exchange possible, no parent in the world should ever have lost a child. It is from just such confusion that your illness comes. Leave off such useless thoughts—swallow your medicine, sip some gruel, and patiently recuperate, I pray you.” Thus he sought to awaken her with reason.

The winter day was short, and soon it was late morning, ten o’clock, the hour of the snake, yet Shino had not returned, unusually for him. “He is not one to graze on grass by the wayside,” thought his parents, with uncalm heart. “What has happened to him?”

Bansaku slid open the door, thinking to go outside and check on him, only to find, to his surprise, a medicine box sitting on the veranda. “Suspicious,” he said. He untied the cord with which it was fastened, opened the lid, and found that the box contained medicine. “Of course it does,” he said, with a lopsided smile. He tucked the box under his arm and hurried back inside, where he said, “Tatsuka, your medicine is here. Shino has already been home and left again, no doubt to chase away his gloom. Truly, he is still a child at heart. Ever since you fell ill, my dear, he has never gone outside on his own account. But now something interesting must have caught his eye, to make him leave again without telling us why.”

Tatsuka’s spirits seemed to fall a bit as she heard this, but she said, “Seldom does he do such a thing. Please, do not scold him for it. I am sure he will be home before long.” Nevertheless, this failure to see his face tugged at a corner of her heart.

Time passed reluctantly like a sheep to the slaughter,¹³ until it was somewhat past noon and the shadows began to lengthen, but still, wait as they might, Shino did not return. “Even if he had become infatuated with some amusement or other, hunger should have cooled his head—where can he be, and not having eaten? I do not understand it.”

When e’en his father was brought thus to speak, how much more did it weigh upon his mother? Time and time again her heavy head she lifted from her pillow and gazed outside; she thought the sound of wood-soled sandals his, but was deceived; and she came to resent and envy others’ footsteps free, as far afield as those who harvest reeds upon the bay of Naniwa.¹⁴and Bansaku, who saw his wife thus chafe at the restraints of illness, stood and watched, now sat again, now looked again, waiting restlessly, until at last the complaint escaped him: “If only my leg was as it used to be, I would dash about until I found him, then bring him home in tow. But the days are short this time of year—I could go out, clutching my crutch and eyeing the sinking sun, but where should I go? And yet ’twould be a pity to let the remaining daylight go to waste—perhaps I shall go as far as Sugamo, at least.” With that, he slung a blade from his waist, leaned tentatively on his bamboo crutch, and then quickly went outside.

Just then, the peasant who lived in the house behind Bansaku’s, a man called Nukasuke, came bustling toward him; in his right hand he held a fishing pole, from which depended a creel, while with his left hand he was supporting Shino, assisting him as he walked. When he saw Bansaku just coming out, Nukasuke met his gaze and gave a cackling laugh, saying, “Is that you there, Mister Inuzuka? I begged a day’s leisure today for to rest my bones, seeing as how I had finished my autumn’s labors, and I have been fishing for small fry in the Kaniwa River since before it was light this morning. As I was coming back by the River Taki, I saw this boy here standing under the Acalanatha Waterfall,¹⁵ performing ablutions—chilled to the bone, and hardly breathing. It nearly bowled me over, and in haste and agitation I pulled him out and led him straight to a monks’ cell, where the priests warmed him by a straw fire, gave him medicine, and fussed over him for a full hour, until he finally returned to his senses. When we had filled his belly somewhat with hot water and rice, we asked him why he did it. He said he was performing ablutions as a prayer that his mother might recover from her grave illness.

“The priests, to say nothing of myself, were filled with admiration at this display of filial piety, such as is hardly heard of in a child not yet ten, and without waiting to be asked they gave him some rice specially washed and blessed for the healing of the illness in question. The waterfall is far from the temple, and nobody knows of it but me—truly, it was a dangerous thing, but it seems the gods and buddhas would not forsake such an intelligent child, nor his parents. His mother will recover, I make no doubt.

“Now, have your precious son back. ’Tis growing dark, and I must be going. Take good care of the sick one, and if you need anything just blow a bamboo horn at your back gate to summon me. And you, my boy, come over to play tomorrow. We can broil these fish and feast on them.” The man seemed quite satisfied with the tale he had told, and now he would not pause to come inside or even to listen to greetings and thanks, but left immediately.

“Well, then,” was all Bansaku said as he leaned on Shino’s shoulder as a crutch and climbed the threshold to his house as if it were a pass across some foot-dragging peak. They went inside to inform Tatsuka, but she had overheard all that was said, and it had caused her to forget the pains of her illness.

Now she called her son closer to her that she might instruct him. “Shino, listen well to what I say, and take it to heart. There are limits to what one may do, even in the name of filial duty. You placed yourself in peril—if you had injured yourself, think how your parents must have bemoaned it. That is how filial piety becomes impiety. The gods give their protection for children who love their parents, even without such prayers. Never do something so dangerous again.”

Shino sniffed back tears as he replied. “I accept your words. This morning, when I returned with medicine from the physician, I overheard my sire conversing with my beloved mother, and you saying that this illness that has kept you bedridden for so long is a sign from the bright gods that your prayers should be granted and your life, my mother, be sacrificed—oh, what a waste!—that mine might be prolonged. When I heard this, my sorrow knew no bounds. To suffocate my sobs I bit my sleeve, already damp from tears shed while I knelt on the veranda; but I thought that, if my mother’s pleas could be granted, then might not mine as well? I then made up my mind to see how I might sacrifice my life to save my dam’s: I placed the medicine that I had brought in silence down upon the boards, and then ran to the River Taki, its grotto long the object of your faith, and there I poured my thoughts out to the goddess as she repeatedly poured onto me her waterfall. Its cords my body whipped to greater strength of heart, and once I even died, I think—I must have, for I know nothing of what came after. But chance would interrupt what should have been: that man Nukasuke interfered, and I came back to life—the goddess did not accept my plea. It galls me and it saddens me,” he said to her, wiping his eyes.

Tatsuka collapsed, wracked with weeping, and tried to reason with him through her tears: “To be a parent means to have a child, but even if I die today, there can be no parent in the world as blessed as me! You came back to us, instead of ending as flotsam beneath the waterfall, precisely because the bright gods accepted your prayer that you might exchange your life for your mother’s; they knew the sincerity of your young heart, and your wisdom, rare for a child of eight or nine. These tears whose flow I cannot stanch are tears of joy unalloyed, for I see how sturdy is your fate, and strong, and that the future of my son is now assured. Your mother was wrong, confused, to vow to exchange her life for yours. ’Twas not a thing that should bring a sign—so please, I beg you, never make such a vow again!”

Bansaku at first said nothing, but listened intently to both. Then he assumed a new aspect as he said, “Shino, my poor child. Only your exceeding dutifulness could have dispelled your caring mother’s confusion. In the story of the Duke of Zhou and the gold-bound coffer, he offered his life to the gods that King Cheng’s illness might be healed.¹⁶ Perhaps that parable applies here, with its singular example of virtue most sincere and affecting. Be that as it may, we can do nothing to improve our allotted span of years. If such a thing were possible, what loyal retainer or dutiful son would ever lose a lord or father on his deathbed by failing to offer his own life instead? It is nevertheless true that the wish to do so is sincerity itself, but while that sincerity may be acceptable to the gods and Buddhas, still our allotment of years may not be increased. You are young and weak, but in some things your intelligence surpasses that of adults: perhaps you already comprehend the principles involved. Give heed, then, to my words.”

And, after instructing him in this way, Bansaku opened to Shino the manner of his grandfather Shōsaku’s loyal death, what happened after the fall of Yūki Castle, the way the two princes Shun’ō and Yasuō met their ends; and also how his own mother Tatsuka, on the way back from the chapel on the River Taki where she had been praying for a child, was able to behold a divine lady herself, how she had been unable to catch the bead the goddess threw to her, but how after bringing home Yoshirō [the hound’s name] she came to be with child, and thus Shino was born.

All these things did Bansaku tell Shino that night, shedding light upon them even as the dawn came to shed its light on speaker and listeners. And then, as if annotating his own words, he said: “Good things are accompanied by auspicious signs, calamities by suspicious ones. Tatsuka witnessed that marvel because the time had come for her to conceive: can there be any doubt of it? However, was that divine lady Sarasvati, or was it a maiden of the mountain, or was it the doing of a fox or a badger? Without knowing the answer to that, for me to believe, and more so to tell others, that you had been entrusted to us by a goddess would have been to make us the laughingstock of all the world, as fools who believed in dreams. I simply concealed it in my heart that the signs spoke of my wife conceiving a child of great wisdom and courage—I even forbade your mother to speak of it—we told no one until I told you, today. Now, I would have you discern the reason and correct principles underlying these things.”

Shino pricked up his ears as his father expounded these things unto him. Every new thing he heard stirred him; even Tatsuka was frequently moved to forget her suffering, and to show what seemed to be excitement.

At this time Shino’s thoughts were of only one thing: “It is because she did not catch the bead the divine lady entrusted to her, but brought home only the hound, that my mother has always been so sickly, and has come to this crisis at last, while I have been safe from harm. That being so, if I can find that bead and bring it back, she might recover. Come what may, I want that bead.” He petitioned the gods and buddhas in prayer, while concealing the desire that had formed in his breast at that moment, but how was he to locate a bead he had never even seen?

His mother’s illness grew daily worse until, after some ten days had passed, a day came that it seemed must bring her end. Tatsuka whispered some final words, and then breathed her last—her death was as the coming on of sleep, and then she was gone, like the frost in the morn. It was the end of the tenth month in the second year of Ōnin,¹⁷ and she was forty-three years of age. Bansaku wept, while Shino collapsed on the ground, staring at the heavens while crimson tears stained his sleeves—he rolled around sobbing until his voice gave out, and still he cried. Their closer friends gathered around them, some to exhort Shino into lifting his spirits, others to join their strength to Bansaku’s in planning for what must follow. Her coffin was finally carried out on the following day, in the gloaming, and she was buried beside Bansaku’s mother.

Shino followed his mother’s casket, and this day, too, he refused to change his attire, but wrapped a cotton cloth around his head and dressed as a girl entire, so that all who saw him were overcome with laughter—everyone pointed and muttered as he went, and as he returned. “Never mind how they treat me daily—what blackguards they are to take joy in another’s sorrow—to mock me today!” Such were Shino’s thoughts on the spectacle, but he kept his feelings from showing on his face.

Only after the forty-nine days of his mother’s intermediacy¹⁸ had been accomplished did he finally tell his father that thus and such had happened on the way to the burial. And then he asked: “In the first place, I am a boy, so why have you made me into a girl? As for myself, I have never particularly minded, but ’twould be a galling thing indeed to think that my father, too, found fault with me. If there is a reason for it, I would know it. Tell me, I pray you.”

His voice, as he asked, held an ire unusual for him, and Bansaku laughed as he replied, “What is there to be so angry about? But since you are, I shall tell you what there is to tell. You had three elder brothers. They all died in infancy. Therefore when she bore you, your mother said, ‘I have misgivings, fears that this child, too, will not grow up, that we are to lose him. If we raise him as a girl, in accordance with the folk ways, then he will come to no harm.’ I had no proofs with which to counter her confusion and womanly grumblings, and so I let her do as she would—that is to say, I named you Shino, which can be taken as meaning thus-and-such. This may seem to be a failing on my part, acceding to her feminine superstition, but could I have countenanced it so thoughtlessly? Today, as in ancient times, a boy until the age of fifteen is of a kind with a girl, evidenced by the fact that his forelocks are not shaved, he is clothed in wide-sleeved robes, and he is even allowed to line them with scarlet cloth. Nor are combs and bodkins only for women—men of old used them as stays for hats, or to keep the backs of their raven caps erect. They laugh at your ways as unsightly because they know not; they are like Shu and Hu, who harmed the honorable Hundun in their confusion.¹⁹ Childhood does not last forever: you yourself will be a man when you reach the age of sixteen. Those who laugh at you do so out of ignorance, and it would betray a lack of wisdom to be angry at them because of it. Put it from you.”

It took this one word from his father to dispel Shino’s doubts. Indeed, as he thought of his dead mother, and how her great care for him had been displayed in everything, she grew yet more dear to him, and her loss more lamentable, until he had to hide his tears as he took his leave.

1. From chapter 12 of Lunyu.

2. The tenth-century Wamyōshō.

3. To readers of Bakin’s day, “Shino” would have registered as a girl’s name.

4. From the first poem in the “19 Old Poems” section of Wen xuan.

5. Coins minted in China during the Yongle era (1408–1424) that circulated widely in Japan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

6. Ages in both Bakin’s day and at the time of the story were calculated differently from the current method. A person was attributed one year of age for each calendar year they had lived in. Thus a child at birth was considered “one,” and became “two” at the next New Year. A child born in the first month of the year and a child born in the last would both turn two at the same time, although, as the text reflects, the actual disparity in their ages might still be a subject for observation and comment.

7. While there may be no specific poem alluded to here, the image of seafolk “burning salt” (i.e., boiling brine or roasting seaweed to make salt) was a common one in classical poetry.

8. An expression derived from the Buddhist enumeration of the thirty-two excellent physical attributes of the Buddha.

9. From an anecdote found in Chapter 2 of Zhuangzi. A monkey keeper gave his monkeys acorns—three each in the morning and four in the evening. When the monkeys complained that he was not giving them enough, he gave them four in the morning and three in the evening. The monkeys were satisfied.

10. The “hair laying” ceremony (kamioki) celebrated the age (usually three) at which a girl’s hair was allowed to grow long. The “sash loosening” ceremony (himotoki) celebrated the age (seven) when a girl exchanged her child’s sash for a grown-up’s.

11. Bakin uses Chinese characters ordinarily read kenpō (Ch. quan fa), denoting a fist-centered style of martial arts originating in China, but he glosses them yawara, denoting the open-handed fighting style also called jūjutsu or jūdō. The translation “hand-to-hand fighting” was chosen in order to avoid committing to either of these styles. Elsewhere Bakin sometimes uses characters ordinarily read hakuda, denoting “open-handed” combat, glossing them yawara, and the translation is adjusted accordingly.

12.Yotsushiro and Yoshiro both mean “four white” (i.e., “four white feet”). Yoshirō, though a partial homophone with Yoshiro, would have been readily recognized as a man’s name, not an animal’s, due to the characters with which it is written (the last of which, read rō, means “man”).

13. This expression (so similar to the English, although nearly opposite in meaning) comes from the Nirvana Sutra (J. Nehangyō).

14. In the original, the wordplay turns on the homophonic feet (ashi) and reeds (ashi), with a poetic reference to the reed harvesters of Naniwa Bay.

15. A Buddhist protective deity known in Japanese as Fudō.

16. An incident recorded in chapter 34 of the ancient document compendium Shu jing (J. Shokyō). The young king recovered, and the duke, too, lived on. The gold-bound coffer was a vessel into which the duke placed the oracles he had received from the gods.

17. 1468.

18. In Buddhism, the period between death and rebirth when the spirit of the deceased was thought to wander in an indeterminate state; special prayers and offerings were performed to ensure the deceased a favorable station in the next life.

19. A reference to a tale related in chapter 7 of Zhuangzi, in which the well-meaning God of the South (Shu) and God of the North (Hu) inadvertently killed the God of the Center (Hundun). The God of the Center lacked any of the seven orifices common to most living beings, although he managed to breathe, see, and hear perfectly well; Shu and Hu gave him these orifices, injuring him in the process.