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

Volume III, Book II

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

Chapter XXIII

Inuzuka undertakes a righteous commission;

Aboshi sells reckless songs

Inuzuka Shino Moritaka, ever since coming to live with his aunt’s husband Ōtsuka Hikiroku, had passed his days, and thus the years, in sequestration. He spoke no very intimate word to any of the villagers except for this farmer Nukasuke, with whom his aunt allowed him to converse because of their old acquaintance, and whom Shino for the same cause trusted. By nature Nukasuke was a guileless simpleton. Indeed, the old man was hardly a fit verbal sparring partner for Shino, but his dim wit never led him to lie; he was in all things sincere, and Shino loved his artlessness as something approaching benevolence. On days when he passed near the man’s gate Shino would inquire after his welfare, standing and conversing as they had done of old.

Now, it happened that Nukasuke’s wife had sloughed off this mortal coil in the autumn of the previous year. Hers had been a long illness, and in their destitution they ran out of money to pay for her medicine. At that time Shino gave them a present of a one-ryō coin to help defray the cost of the medicine. Hikiroku and Kamezasa did not know of this.

Shino came to have such savings because his father Bansaku had left it to him. Bansaku, too, had been poor, but after his death Shino found coins worth ten ryō at the bottom of his armor chest, with a note that read, Pay for my funeral with a third of this money. The rest keep hidden at your waist, and use it when you or a friend should have great need. This further evidence of Bansaku’s consideration, kindness, and far foresight brought tears boiling up in Shino’s eyes; he hid them, with the money, in his sleeves, and never said a word about it to Kamezasa and her husband. When they asked, “Have you any savings?” he produced three of the ryō and paid for a coffin and tombstone. Then on the night of the observances of the thirty-fifth day since his father’s death, Shino delivered another ryō to his aunt to pay for the service and the banquet. Hikiroku and Kamezasa, both taken aback at the sudden appearance of this money, asked him, “Is there more?” To this Shino replied, “This is all I have.” “No doubt,” they thought, and never asked him again.

“For seven or eight years now I have lived with my aunt and her husband. Bansaku’s Tillage is so in name only—it brings me nothing. They dress me only in old clothes. I must admit it has been somewhat constraining, and yet by shunning delicacies and finery, I have managed not to shrink my father’s bequest. However, Nukasuke on many a day shared my sorrow for my dog Yoshirō. If I fail to help him in his present hardship, I shall be turning my back on him.” Having thus made up his mind, he gave Nukasuke the money in secret: Nukasuke and his wife could not hold back their tears; they prostrated themselves before Shino, praising his faithfulness and righteousness. They used his gift to buy more medicine, but Nukasuke’s wife’s karma must have been ordained, for she died.

On top of this, in the seventh month of this year Nukasuke had come down with an epidemy, since which time he had not raised his head from his pillow. Few would go near him for fear of contracting the contagion, but Shino went in secret to Nukasuke’s dwelling. He made medicinal infusions, and offered Nukasuke food; when he had no time to visit himself he explained matters to Gakuzō and sent him instead, also in secret, to watch over Nukasuke. Now that Kamezasa had informed him that Nukasuke’s illness was grave, Shino dropped everything and hurried to look in on him.

Nukasuke’s raging fever had finally subsided a bit, and he seemed to be at rest, but he was clearly declining day by day. Shino knelt by his pillow. “How do you feel, Uncle Nukasuke? ’Tis I, Shino.”

Nukasuke fixed Shino with a steady gaze from where he lay—he tried to sit up, to assume a more befitting posture, but could not—he began coughing in much evident distress. “Master Inuzuka, how good of you to come. It seems I must bid you farewell without repaying you the favor merciful you showed me lo, these many days and years. I am sixty-one this year; I have outlived my wife. I have no savings, but neither have I any kin: I should be able to rest easy, it would seem. And yet one thing weighs upon my heart.”

He was barely able to say this much, however, before another fit seized him, blocking his throat and troubling his breath. Shino hurried to warm an infusion of medicine and then pressed it on Nukasuke; when the latter had wet his throat with it, he continued.

“I said something weighs on my heart: it is none other than my son, of whom I have never told a soul. I am originally a native of the region of Susaki, in the country of Awa. Between tilling the land and fishing I somehow managed to make a living, and then toward the end of the tenth month of the third year of Chōroku,¹ my first wife gave birth to a boy child, whom we named Genkichi. The boy appeared to be quite healthy, but his mother never quite recovered after the birth—she gave little milk, so that the nursling himself came to be afflicted with a marasmus. For the rest of that year and into the next I tended to the mother and ministered to the child in their illness, neglecting my tilling and my nets; I sold nearly everything we had, but despite it all, in the end my wife passed away.

“All I had left were debts and an infant in but his second year—I certainly could not raise him all by myself. I searched and yearned for someone to adopt him, but ’twas only with difficulty and begged milk that he had grown this much—he looked like a hungry ghost,² all skin and bones. Nobody would take him, with me unable to provide funds for his raising. I was out of options, and then a whim took me—the inlet at Susaki is holy ground, because of En the Ascetic’s grotto,³ and the taking of life is forbidden there. This means that all the scaled creatures gather there—’tis like a fish pond with no fisher. The thought came to me that if I let my net down there, surreptitiously, in the space of a single night I could easily catch enough to bring me several strings of cash. So I told some lie and left the infant with a neighbor for a while and, under cover of darkness, I went to that forbidden place. I rowed my boat out and began hauling in bream. Only a few had I pulled up, however, when I was discovered. I was immediately taken and dragged to the court of the lord of the land. I could not evade my guilt, and I was sentenced to be wrapped in mats and thrown into the sea.

“I spent a while chained up in prison, but then, as luck would have it, that autumn Lord Satomi, the Lord and Protector of that country, suddenly decreed a general amnesty, as it happened to be the third anniversary of the deaths of his lady Isarago and his beloved daughter Princess Fuse. My sentence of death was commuted to banishment, and on the day I went into exile, His Lordship’s charity saw to it that my boy Genkichi, who had been entrusted to the village headman, was returned to me—the proverbial mixed blessing, to be sure.

“There was nothing for it. I was chased out of Awa. Carrying the babe sometimes in my arms and sometimes on my back, I crossed Kazusa and traveled until I reached Gyōtoko in Shimōsa. Oh, the hardships of the road I followed! Unused to begging, my child and I were stricken with hunger and fatigue, and knew no way to escape them. There was no eluding occult punishment for catching the scaled creatures so prized by En the Ascetic.

“I made up my mind that rather than collapse and die on the roadside and expose my shame to the world, it would be better to cast myself and the child together into the water, and to that end I went to some bridge, the name of which I knew not. I planted my feet on the railing, but just as I was about to jump off, a man crossed the bridge. He seemed to be a courier for a military house, and now he hastened to stop me, holding me in his arms, now pushing and now pulling, so that I could not budge. He earnestly inquired as to the cause of my actions, and I told him every last thing, willing to endure the shame out of penitence.

“When he had heard me out, he pitied me deeply and said, ‘So you are not originally, by nature, a bad man. I am one of the Kamakura Lord’s [meaning ashikaga nariuji] men, and while my stipend is small and my position mean, I have a wish to do a work of charity. Why? I am past forty, and though I have had children, none have survived to grow up. My wife and I have joined our hearts in lifting up orisons to the gods and buddhas, and we vowed to ourselves to relieve the sufferings of our fellow men, as being the thing most fitting for us to do. That was long ago. Meanwhile, you have one child too many, so that you would choose death both for yourself and your son. How varied are the lots of men in this floating world! Therefore, let me have your child. I shall adopt him and take care of him, come what may.’

“Ah, what a comfort and support his words were to me! The depths of the gratitude I felt then I cannot now express, out of breath and heavy of tongue as I am now—but understand, I pray you, that he seemed to me as a buddha or god encountered in the depths of Hell. No more did I debate, but rather did I take him up on his offer, just as it stood. As I wiped away my heartfelt tears, he spoke again. ‘I am a courier in the service of my lord, and just now I am on the way back from a mission to the Satomi in Awa: I cannot carry an infant. There is an inn nearby where I often stay. I shall speak to the master of the house and leave the child with him for a period, while I return to Kamakura. I shall tell my wife about this, and before many days have passed I shall come to get the boy. He is emaciated. But at the River Kana in Musashi there is a wondrous cure for the five childhood illnesses. It will prove effective if I administer it to him, and how could I neglect to, now that we are father and son—how can I slight him and raise him both? Rest easy from this day forth, and if there is any place you aspire to go, I bid you go there at once.’

“To convince me, he took from his bosom two square coins of gold and gave them to me as travel funds, together with a basket he had tied to his waist, which must have contained food for his midday meal. There was no way to refuse him: I accepted the gifts and put them away. I thanked him again and again for his goodness. Then, after coaxing and coddling Genkichi for a moment, I handed him to the man, who took Genkichi in his arms, turned around, and went back the way he had come. I watched him go, both rejoicing and sorrowing as I did so, for I had just parted from my son for life, and I had not even asked his adoptive father’s name, nor told him mine.

“With that I had finally laid down my burden of love and obligation, but I could not shed my sorrow—it stayed with me as I left Katsushika, taking a boat from the Gyōtoko shore toward the landing at Edo. I drifted here to Ōtsuka, where I had an acquaintance; I hired myself out to a farming family. That winter Your Lordship was born. The following year, Momishichi, the former inhabitant of this house, died, and word had it his widow sought someone to enter the house as her husband. With somebody acting as go-between, I assumed her name and the household. But a two-quart gourd will never hold three: I cringed all year, my tribute in arrears, drinking only water, a straitened farmer, and scorned as oaf and dimwit. But I never angered. My cup of suffering was brewed back home from poverty that led me on to theft and guilt: I ever accused myself of this and never grasped for what I could not have, made honesty and rectitude my creed, and every morning pressed my palms in prayer, repenting to His Honor Shōkaku my peccancy, and on his day each month for eighteen years I have not allowed my chopsticks to touch even a salted sardine, so dedicated have I been to him for all these years, and for whose sake? Genkichi’s—out of my hope that he might grow up safe from harm, into a man that can stand by any other.

“For this reason, in spite of never having spoken of my son even to my wife, who passed away last year, I now on brink of death have rambled on and told you, my lord, whom I know from of old to be a man possessed of uncommon faithfulness and righteousness. Having said all this, I cannot hope to learn anything about my son, attempting which would be an act as vain as clutching at shadows or pursuing the wind; and yet those of the house that was formerly Overseer in Kamakura [meaning mochiuji and nariuji] were in the line of being masters to Master Bansaku, were they not? Rumor has it that the Minister of the Court Nariuji, having fallen into discord with the two Overseers, Master Yamanouchi Akisada and Master Ōgigayatsu Sadamasa, could no longer make Kamakura his dwelling place, and so removed to the castle at Koga, from which place he was also driven, so that of late he is in the Chiba castle. If so, then may not my son Genkichi, along with his adoptive father, have followed him in their duties to the Chiba in Shimōsa? If you, milord, should have occasion to visit the Lord of Koga [meaning nariuji], and if you should take the opportunity to learn aught of Genkichi, may it please Your Lordship to tell these things to him in secret. If my son knows not that his real father is elsewhere, then there is nothing to be done. But if he has heard something vague to that effect, then it may be weighing on his heart in some slight degree.

“Yea, even were we to encounter each other now, we would have forgotten each other’s faces, father and son, and would likely not know to identify ourselves to each other—but he was born with a mark on his right cheek in the shape of a peony flower. Furthermore, I caught a bream to celebrate the seventh night after his birth, and when I cut the fish open, in its belly there was a bead, and on the bead there was what appeared to be writing. I took it to the midwife for her to read, and she said, ‘It seems to be—it looks like—the character shin, that they say is also read makoto or such-like—fidelity.’ And so I placed this in an amulet pouch along with his umbilical cord. On the pouch his mother wrote—in our domestic script, though in her hand it looked like bent and twisted nails—‘Birth hair, umbilical cord, and bead to be kept secret as a divine gift, belonging to Genkichi, only son of Nukasuke, a resident of Awa, born the twentieth day of the tenth month of Chōroku 3.’ He will still have it, if he did not lose it before he became old enough to understand such things. Pray employ it as proof: with it, there can be no mistake.

“But doubtless it has pained you to listen to such profitless things. Until this morning my tongue was tied—I have only been able to say this much because when I saw Your Lordship’s face I suddenly felt better, my mood clearer, as a lamp burns brighter just before it goes out. Young man, you have a long future ahead of you—make something of yourself, I beg you.”

Tears rolled down his cheeks as he spoke. Among the leaves of speech of the wise men of yore, there are those that speak of the sadness of the cry of a bird that is about to die, and the goodness of the words of a man who is about to die.⁴ Nukasuke’s words now so surpassed his normal conversation as to rend the heart; they were haunting in their wisdom.

Shino thought of this Genkichi, his mark and his bead, and he thought of himself, and was uncommonly moved. He exclaimed, “Ah, Uncle, I accept your charge! Today I have learned for the first time of your lineage, your error and repentance, your years of devotion and dedication, beyond what most men are capable of. Not only this, your son and I have something in common, a hidden coincidence. I consider this evidence of a vow from a previous life, and I feel as if he is an elder brother I have yet to lay eyes on. When the opportunity presents itself I shall go to Shimōsa, I shall search out where he dwells, and though I know not his adoptive father’s name, with so many evident proofs I shall not fail to find him. Now, worry yourself no more about these matters, but take your medicine. Night approaches, and while I wish I might nurse you, I am but a lodger in my relatives’ house, and cannot often do as I wish. However, when I have once given my word, it is as firm and unchangeable as metal or stone. Rest easy in your mind, I pray you.” Shino thus took great pains to console the old man. Nukasuke, breast choked with sorrow, could not speak further, but only press his palms together in reverence.

Twilight had come swiftly upon them. Shino lit a lamp and offered the old man more of the medicinal infusion. Then he bade Nukasuke farewell and returned to his own dwelling, where, that evening, he told to Gakuzō alone the tale of Nukasuke’s last testament, Genkichi’s mark, and his bead.

Gakuzō, excited, exclaimed in a whisper, “There can be no doubt: he must be one of our cohort. If only I could do as I wished, I would go and seek him this very moment—I would look upon him.”

They parted almost before Gakuzō had finished speaking. In the morning, Shino awoke early and went to visit Nukasuke. When he arrived he found that the peasants on the farms roundabout had also come, and they informed him that Nukasuke had sloughed off this mortal coil at dawn.

Shino, especially, felt his death keenly, and repeated his exhortations to Hikiroku until the latter lent seven hundred mon in Yongle cash, so that the coffin could be sent to the sanctum that evening. After some days had passed and Nukasuke’s cottage was sold, those seven hundred mon were returned to Hikiroku, while the leftover cash and his miniscule tillage were donated to the sanctum to provide for incense and flowers for Nukasuke and his wife for generations to come. All of this the Estatesman Hikiroku managed, giving instructions to the neighbors, but in fact all knew, without having to be told, that Shino had exhorted Hikiroku to do it, and there was nobody who did not wish “that Shino’s turn as Estatesman might be given him soon—he is charitable and solicitous of those beneath him—he will be as a father and mother to us.”

Now it so happened that there appeared a man named Aboshi Samojirō, a fine specimen of youth who had formerly been employed in the house of the Overseers, but was now masterless. Until recently he had been part of the retinue of Ōgigayatsu Sadamasa, Major in the Repairs Ministry. Clever and nimble with flattery, he had once risen high in his lord’s favor, but he had offended many, and so his comrades brought weighty charges against him, abruptly exposing his unrighteous acts and finally causing him to be banished. His father and mother having already departed this world, and he as yet having neither wife nor child of his own, he drifted to the village of Ōtsuka on the assurance of some distant relation. Once there he redeemed Nukasuke’s former cottage and established himself there, for form’s sake.

This Samojirō was twenty-five this year, fair of complexion and noble of brow—a far more handsome man than was usually to be found in such rustic surroundings. His calligraphy was of the Grandmaster style,⁵ as all could see, and even his dashed-off notes were written in a formidable hand; in addition to which, he was learned in all the arts of entertainment—he could sing and dance to popular airs and risqué songs, and he could play the hand drum and the single-segment bamboo flute. The village had been in want of a teacher of brushmanship since the passing of Inuzuka Bansaku, and so Samojirō began gathering schoolchildren to him each day, by which means he sought to make his living. He also instructed girls in dancing and singing, and since those who prefer frivolous accomplishments are as numerous in the country as in the Capital, his pupils in the performing arts soon outnumbered his calligraphy students, and daily increased. As they danced to his tattoo, maiden and widow alike, they many of them came to see their reputations sullied. Kamezasa, however, had recklessly loved such skills ever since she was a child, and she now interceded so energetically with her husband on Samojirō’s behalf that though some were outraged, Hikiroku pretended not to hear them and refused to chase Aboshi out of town.

This was how matters stood as the year drew a close, at which time Hikami Jadayū died, who had been Lieutenant to the master of the local castle, the Ōishi Assistant in the Guards Ministry. In or about the fifth month of the following year, Jadayū’s eldest son Hikami Kyūroku was given his late father’s post and stipend and made the new Lieutenant, and he made a tour of inspection, visiting this place and that with a train that included numerous junior vassals and servants, as well as his subordinates, Nurude Gobaiji and Isakawa Iohachi.

That evening they stayed with the Estatesman Hikiroku. Hikiroku had been long in preparing the banquet, so as to miss no opportunity for bribing or currying favor, and he pressed cups on them more fervently than propriety demanded. As it happened to be the metal-monkey night, Kamezasa prevailed upon her husband to summon Aboshi Samojirō and urge him to play some dancing tunes for them, while they passed the metal-monkey vigil⁶; and as she was in the habit of boasting of her daughter, she dressed Hamaji in thin silks of hues far gayer than the girl usually wore and forced her willy-nilly into the gathering. She made Hamaji fill the men’s cups, and play the Tsukushi koto,⁷ while she caused Samojirō to perform his risqué songs, egging on the festivity.

In such a company, being spoken to so familiarly by men she had never seen before, and on top of this having to sit elbow to elbow with Aboshi and expose her paltry plucking of the strings to the hearing of the guests, all the while ruing what Shino must needs think of her if he knew, Hamaji felt as embarrassed as ever she could—but she could not resist her mother. Under duress, she performed but one tune—and the Lieutenant Hikami Kyūroku and the others, shameless faces so flushed with drink as to rival the lamps in their glow, all turned to gaze on Hamaji through narrowed eyes and with thick voices burst out in praise of her playing, beat out short sharp rhythms with their fans and drooled unknowingly from long leers: the long and short of it was that they forgot themselves utterly in their enjoyment and braying laughter.

“Forsooth, this evening’s hospitality has been such that sake is not all that is fine, and food not all that is good, for those terms must be reserved for the song of the daughter of the house—her subtle way, like a pin dropping, with the strings would trip even Genpin⁸—again, a pin—if he heard it, would cause him to fall like a dropped pin! Wondrous, oh wondrous the sound, like Her Heavenly Highness Sarasvati of the Wondrous Sound,⁹ who if they played a duet would cast aside her plectrum in wonderment! Ah, what splendid music, what diverting music, this is!” Thus they sang and slurred, until Hamaji in her shame and anger could no longer stand it: she allowed the scattered motion of the crowd to move her to a point from which she could conveniently disappear.

Now Samojirō was masterless, having left the employ of the Overseers, but as Kyūroku and his companions had never been stationed in Kamakura, they knew him not, nor he them. Aboshi was frivolous by nature, a buffoonish player well versed in revels of this sort, and well able to ply the guests with cups and with empty talk and flattery. Now and then he would spew forth a clever verse, to much laughter. He addressed Kyūroku and his men as “my lords,” pronounced them his “patrons,” called Hikiroku “His Eminence” and Kamezasa “Her Ladyship of the Inner Chambers,” addressed the kitchen wenches as “Elder Sister” and all the laborers as “Doctor.” He was, in short, indiscriminate in his manner of address, the mark of an unserious man.

Inevitably in a gathering of this sort, the mature and steady person with no taste for sensual pursuits appears a fool, even as King Zhou considered Bi Gan unworthy, and Shu and Hu thought Hundun a freak.¹⁰ Thus it was that on this evening Shino had shut himself up alone in his room, where he perused military treatises by lamplight: he did not join the assembly, nor did Hikiroku ask after him. Indeed, an idea had occurred to Hikiroku, and in accordance with it he revealed nothing about Shino to the Lieutenant—not a word.

Then came the cock’s crow, signaling daybreak. While the stacks of cups and dishes were being cleared away, Hikiroku thanked and honored Kyūroku and his men, speaking of how abashed he was with gratitude and offering them breakfast, of which none of the men were able to eat very much, the previous night’s sake not yet having worn off. When the three visitors got to their feet together, saying that they still had many places to visit, Hikiroku hastened to insinuate himself into their retinue, and saw them off as far as the edge of the village.

Kamezasa had for some time prior to this made a point of summoning Aboshi Samojirō for every sun vigil or moon vigil,¹¹ or whenever the opportunity presented itself, that she might listen to his risqué songs. After a time Samojirō, gazing on Hamaji, had begun to smolder for her: he sneaked past the gates of observant eyes in order to string together dewdrops of words for her, or flash her a lascivious look, or, with no other go-between but bird-track–like writing, he spoke to her with his brush. What manner of thing must he have written? Hamaji would not touch his note, but had cursed it shockingly—and thenceforth, whenever Aboshi visited, Hamaji had avoided him, utterly refusing to show her face to him again.

Verily a person’s nature is not dictated by use. This maiden’s heart resembled her parents’ not at all—she was proper in all her actions—even with Shino she did not speak intimately, as their marriage had not yet been formalized, although she had it from her own parents’ lips that she had been given to him. How much more deeply, then, did it impress her that to have her name spoken of in conjunction with a frivolous fop would be humiliating to a girl? She thought her mother horrid for bringing such people in to her. That is why, on the night that Hikami Kyūroku and his men stopped with them and her parents so egregiously caused Hamaji to wait upon them, and to be part of the gay diversions at the banquet, joining with Samojirō in playing ditties on the koto, she was galled, she could no longer excuse her parents’ refusal to heed objections, she lamented it as a shame beyond measure, and she performed but one tune.

Thus it was with Hamaji, but her mother Kamezasa possessed a different kind of heart. Daily her thoughts ran in this course: “I have heard that this fellow Aboshi Samojirō is a masterless samurai from Kamakura, but he is also a fine and handsome man. To hear him tell it, when he was in Kamakura he was awarded a stipend of five hundred strings of cash, and placed at the head of the Overseer’s attendants, enjoying uncommon favor from his lord, such that his colleagues became jealous of his primacy and formed a league to slander him, so that in the end he was let go, but this was contrary to his lord’s true aspirations on his behalf, and his lord privately intends to recall him to his service in the near future. Samojirō’s lonely existence in this village will be for but a little while, he says. Now he is starved and disheveled, but if things are as he says they are, before long he will be restored. Nothing could be better than to have, when that happens, a son-in-law who wields power in the house of the Overseers. A little compassion now can bring glorious advantage later. A child cannot understand her parent’s heart. Hamaji thinks of nobody but Shino for her husband—how dull!—and wastes away awaiting her wedding. Happenstance made something apparent to me recently. Alas, when we gave our daughter to our unlovable nephew—all at once—it was like being bitten by a paddy-leech: to pull it off is to wash away blood with more blood, and to bring a pain that will long linger. Accordingly, if we recommend Aboshi, then no harm will come to her later, if Aboshi has intentions toward her, while for Hamaji to place her affections on Shino portends no very reliable future. Even if she were to abandon all thought of advantage in choosing a man, Samojirō is handsome; he writes a charming hand, is alive to all manner of entertainment, and has a wondrous singing voice. He is as neat as they come, and Shino hardly bears mentioning in the same breath. Even I, with all my years, am liable to become disordered in my thoughts without my husband. There can be no better decoy than Aboshi to get Hamaji to stop thinking about Shino.”

And so, without regard for the scorn of the world or the wrath of the villagers, she watched for every chance and seized every opportunity to invite Aboshi—and often it was—to her house, while for his part Samojirō, who would never learn, thought first to ingratiate himself with Hamaji’s parents, and then to find a way to make Hamaji his own. These intentions were quite evident, as he never failed, even on his busiest days, to come when Kamezasa summoned him, accompanying the messenger to her straightaway; and when he encountered Hikiroku in the street he always doffed his wooden sandals, even if it was raining. He bowed, and not from carrying his measure of rice—he maintained such a low posture in his address to the Estatesman and his wife that they were simply overjoyed at his flattery, and thought him one of a kind.

1. 1459.

2.Gaki (Skt. preta) are inhabitants of one of the Six Realms of Buddhist cosmology. They are condemned to an eternal hunger that no amount of eating can satisfy; they are typically depicted with the bony limbs and distended stomachs associated with starvation.

3. En no Shōkaku, also called En no Ozuno or En no Gyōja (En the Ascetic), was a legendary wizard exiled to Izu Island in 699; legend said that while in exile he would travel over the waves to visit the mainland at Awa. His exile and peculiar powers are recounted in the ninth-century collection of Buddhist stories Nihon ryōiki. He was considered the founder of shugendō, a form of asceticism practiced by yamabushi, mountain priests who figure prominently in medieval story and legend. For more on his grotto see Part One, Chapter VIII.

4. Found in Lunyu, chapter 8.

5. An orthodox style of calligraphy thought to descend from the priest Kūkai (774-835), also known as Kōbō Daishi (Grandmaster who Spread the Law).

6. It was believed that on the night of the sexagenary cycle governed by metal and the monkey, the three protective bugs that were thought to live within one’s body left to report one’s misdeeds to heaven; by staying awake all night, one might prevent the bugs from leaving to make their report. The metal-monkey night came to be observed as something of a festive occasion.

7. A koto is a stringed instrument of a type similar to the zither, with a long sounding board across which strings are stretched. The Tsukushi koto was meant for performing pieces arranged by the late-Muromachi monk Kenjun, who hailed from Tsukushi (northern Kyūshū).

8. A Nara-era monk whose name furnishes a neat pun on gen, “string,” and gen, “dark” or “subtle.”

9.Myōon tenjo or tennyo, an epithet of Sarasvati (Benzai), who is often depicted playing a biwa (lute).

10. Zhou was the wicked last king of the Shang dynasty; when his uncle Bi Gan remonstrated against his conduct, he had Bi’s heart torn from his body (see Shiji, chapter 3). For Hundun, see Chapter XVII, note 19.

11. A sun vigil (himachi) was a medieval rural observance in which ritual abstinence was observed while waiting for the sun to rise on certain special days, followed by a party. A moon vigil (tsukimachi) was a similar gathering while waiting for moonrise, except that it typically involved a mixture of prayer and feasting.