. . . and don’t show your daughter to a monk, even if he seems to have given up the world. Oshichi’s mother had this in mind when she took her daughter home from the temple, tearing the lovers apart. . . .
The boy proceeded to clear a straw mat of the radishes and burdocks spread upon it. Covering his head with his bamboo rainhat and his body with the bottom half of his straw raincoat, he lay down to pass the night there. But the wind blew hard around his sleeping place, and the earthen floor gave him chills, It was not at all a healthy place to lie in. Before long he was wheezing and gasping, and his eyes grew bleary.
When Oshichi noticed this, she called out: “The country boy, poor thing—give him something to drink, hot water if nothing else!”
So Mume, the kitchenmaid, put hot water in a kitchen cup and gave it to a manservant, Kyushichi, who took the cup to the boy.
“It’s very kind of you,” the grateful lad said.
“You should live in Edo,” Kyushichi cooed, stroking the boy’s forelock in the darkness. “You would have so many admirers here. It’s really too bad. . . .”
“But I was brought up in such rude style. I don’t know about anything except woodcutting or leading a plow horse.”
Kyushichi fondled the boy’s feet. “It’s nice they aren’t all chapped and cracked. Now how about your mouth?”
As Kyushichi bent forward the boy clenched his teeth and tears filled his eyes, so distasteful was all this to him. But Kyushichi had sense enough not to persist. “Ugh, your mouth smells of garlic or leeks or something.” And with this excuse he gave up his obnoxious advances.
It was soon bedtime for the rest of the household. By dim lamplight the servants climbed upstairs on a ladder nailed to the wall. The master saw to it that his safe was locked.
“Take care with your lamp fires,” his wife cautioned everyone, and then, ever mindful of her daughter, she slid shut the door to the girl’s room. No lover would pass that way tonight.
The midnight bell had just rung when someone knocked on the outer door. A man and woman were heard calling: “Nursey just came in for the blessed event! It’s a boy and the father is overjoyed!”
Their cries caused a stir in the house. “How wonderful!” exclaimed Oshichi’s father and mother as they came running from their bedroom. Quickly they picked up some seaweed and licorice,7 told Oshichi to close the door behind them, and rushed from the house, each in his haste wearing but one slipper.
Oshichi closed the door and had started back to bed when she thought of the country boy. “Carry a candle for me,” she told one of the maids, and went out to see him.
How forlorn the boy looked, sprawled out there on the earthen floor!
“He’s comfortable enough,” observed the maid. “Don’t disturb him.”
But Oshichi pretended not to hear and went near enough so that she could smell the fragrance of a Hyobukyo sachet8 he was wearing. Pulling back his raincoat, she stood there entranced by the sight of his rumpled hair and of his face, barely visible.
“I wonder how old he is,” she thought, poking a hand into his garments to find that he was wearing underwear of fine, yellow silk.
“What’s this!” she cried in amazement.
It was Kichisaburo.
“Why in the world do you come looking like this?” Oshichi asked aloud, without a thought of being over-heard, and clasped him tenderly.
Confronted by her so suddenly, Kichisaburo was speechless for a moment. “I disguised myself like this in the hope of seeing you for just a little while. Please understand: I have suffered so much for you tonight.” He began to tell her all the things that had happened to him, one after the other.
“Well, come inside first. Then you can tell me all your troubles,” she said, taking his hand to lead him in.
But Kichisaburo’s suffering that evening left him too weak to walk, so Oshichi and the maid put their hands together, making a cradle in which to carry him. They proceeded to one of the bedrooms, gave his hands as hard a rubbing as they could stand, and brought him so many different kinds of medicine that he could not help smiling a little.
“We shall drink the cup of love together and spend the night emptying our hearts to each other.”
Just then, alas, her father came home, and misfortune seemed to be upon them again. Kichisaburo hid himself behind a clothes rack, expecting any moment to be discovered. But nothing happened.
“Well,” Oshichi greeted her father, “are both Ohatsu and the boy doing well?”
“Yes, thank goodness!” the happy old man answered. “She is my only niece and I couldn’t help being anxious about her. It’s a load off my mind.” Then in his exuberance he started planning for the baby’s layette.
. . . she could smell the fragrance of a Hyobukyo sachet he was wearing. Pulling back his raincoat, she stood there entranced by the sight of his rumpled hair and of his face, barely visible . . . .
“Everything will be festive, all the lucky things—storks and turtles, pine and bamboo—in decorative designs with silver and gold powder sprinkled on the cloth. . . .”
“But,” one of the maids suggested, “there is no great hurry about it, sir. You can do it at your leisure tomorrow.”
“No, no, the sooner you do such things the better,” he insisted. He took some paper from a pillow drawer, spread it out, and began to cut out patterns. Everyone else was annoyed, and after some time the maids at last coaxed him into going to bed.
Then the lovers would have liked to talk together, but as there was only one thin screen enclosing them, they were afraid of being overheard. So they got out ink and paper and in the lamplight wrote down everything on their minds and in their hearts. Showing their notes to each other, they made love as silently as the mandarin ducks painted on the screen behind them.
Thus throughout the night their touching correspondence went on.
When dawn came to separate them, their longing for each other was unappeased. It was a sad life, not as they would have it, and they might not meet again.
4. Farewell to the cherry blossom
Night and day poor Oshichi was sick at heart but said nothing about it to anyone. She did not know when she would see her lover again. Then one stormy night she recalled the great conflagration from which she had sought refuge in the temple, and it struck her that another such disturbance might give her a chance to see Kichisaburo. Mad as it was, this desire prompted her to commit a crime which proved her undoing. She started a fire, but the first traces of smoke aroused people’s curiosity. When they looked in to investigate, they found Oshichi there on the spot.
Apprehended and questioned, she told her whole story without any attempt to conceal the truth, and it soon became known to all as the most tragic story of the time. That very day Oshichi was exposed to shame on the old bridge of Kanda, and later at Yotsuya, Asakusa, Shiba, and Nihombashi. Everywhere people gathered around to look and there was no one who did not pity her. Nor could anyone who thought about the case fail to see that crime must always be avoided. Heaven does not tolerate it.
Since the girl felt no remorse, however, her person did not waste away. Each day she looked just as she always had. Each day her black hair was nicely dressed and her figure was lovelier than ever. Alas, she was only sixteen, but even the flowers of spring must one day lose their petals and die, while the ardent cuckoo joins in general lamentation: “This is the end, this is the end.”
Still firmly resigned, Oshichi told herself, “It is all a dream, an illusion,” and she relied upon a prayer to Amida for salvation. In her hand she held a sprig of late-blooming cherry, a token of someone’s deep sympathy for her.
Gazing at it, she sang: “How sad a world it is, when I must fall today like the last blossoms of the cherry and leave my ill fame to blow about in the winds of spring.”
Her song redoubled the grief of those who stood by until she was put to death, which was soon to come as it must sometime to every living thing. At dawn the bell struck, and in the ro
adside grasses, no longer green, Oshichi gave up her life to join the wisps of smoke that hovered in the morning air. Death, the smoke of life, lies waiting at the end of every road. Nothing is so certain, nothing so sad.
Night and day poor Oshichi was sick at heart but said nothing about it to anyone. She did not know when she would see her lover again. . . . Mad as it was, this desire prompted her to commit a crime which proved her undoing. . . .
But that was yesterday. Today in Suzu-no-Mori the ashes and dust are gone and only the wind-blown pines remain. The travelers who pass that way have all heard the story of Oshichi. None of them goes on before he has made an offering in her memory. On the day of her death even the shreds of Oshichi’s underwear were picked up by people and saved, to become the inspiration for countless stories in later times. And even those who did not know her well came to plant anise by her grave on days of mourning.
To some inquisitive souls, however, it seemed strange that Oshichi’s lover had not tried to follow her in death. So they started ugly rumors about him, little knowing that he was still unaware of her death and still so madly in love with her that he could not tell front from back. Indeed, he seemed on the verge of death himself, with little to live for, half out of his mind. His friends were so concerned that they asked each other: “If we tell him the news of Oshichi, what chance is there he will live?”
Meanwhile Kichisaburo decided to put his affairs in order and await the end, for death could not be far off. But his friends, trying to keep hope alive by telling him nice things, said: “Today or tomorrow she will come, looking just exactly as you remember her.”
At this his spirits revived. He refused to take the medicines they brought him and began to talk as if in a dream. “Dearest, I love you!” he cried out, and then called in despair: “Has she not come yet?”
Thus he mourned, unwittingly, on the fifth day of mourning9 since her death five weeks before. On the seventh day of mourning, when mochi was prepared for all close relatives, Oshichi’s parents went to the temple and begged that they be allowed to see her lover. It was explained to them what a state he was in.
“This might bring on another tragedy,” his friends argued, until the parents agreed to leave things as they stood.
“If he is a man at all, he could never live on after hearing the news. We shall keep it a deep secret until his illness has passed and he is well again. Then we can tell him Oshichi’s last words that day and cherish him as a reminder of her.”
Consoling themselves in this way, the parents had a gravestone set up and inscribed to Oshichi. On it they sprinkled memorial water, which with their tears kept the stone ever moist. In shape the gravestone somehow resembled Oshichi, or so it seemed to the weeping eyes of her mother. Such is the unpredictability of life in this topsy-turvy world, that the mother should be left behind to mourn the untimely death of her daughter.
5. The sudden decision to become a monk
Fate is unreliable, but there is nothing so inexorable.
“If I died,” Kichisaburo thought, “both my love and all this bitterness would come to an end.”
It was one hundred days after Oshichi’s death when the young man arose from his bed and, leaning on a bamboo staff, went for his first walk in the quiet precincts of the temple. There was a new gravestone, he noticed, and what a shock it was to see the name upon it!
“Alas, that I should not have been told! People will not understand this. They will say that cowardice made me slow to follow her. The gossip will be unbearable.”
He reached for his sword, but the monks caught him in time.
“Your life may not be worth living, but there is your sworn friend10 to take leave of, and the superior, who must be told what you have in mind. Ask him to decide your fate. The fact is, it was your sworn brother who left you in the care of this temple out of consideration for his vow to cherish and watch over you. Now you must consider the unhappiness it would bring to him. Above all, you must not be the cause of further tragedy.”
So they remonstrated with him, and their arguments proved convincing. He gave up his idea of suicide. Still, he had no real desire to go on living in the world, and told the superior so, much to the latter’s alarm.
“Your life is solemnly pledged to another, who earnestly besought us to look after you. He has now gone to Matsumae, but I hear that he is certain to come here this fall. Then you can explain everything to him. If anything happens before that time, it will be my fault and I will suffer for it. But as soon as he returns, you are free to do what you please.”
Such was the advice of the superior, and since the young man was indebted to him for his recent kindness, he could only promise to do what the old priest asked. Even so, for the sake of his own peace of mind, the superior took away Kichisaburo’s sword, among other things, and assigned several men to keep a close watch on him. Thus nothing untoward happened until one day the young man came into the monks’ quarters and began talking to them.
“. . . People will not understand this. They will say that cowardice made me slow to follow her. The gossip will be unbearable.” He reached for his sword, but the monks caught him in time. . . .
“I am alive, it is true, but I must suffer the most insufferable slander from everyone. Alas that I should still have been pledged to another, when that girl came along and made me a slave to her desires. To him I brought suffering, to her the worst misfortune. Now I am deserted by all, by the Buddha and by the gods who sanctified our oath of manly love. And the worst of it,” he sobbed with deep emotion, “is what will happen when my sworn brother comes back. There is no way to justify myself before him. I must end my life quickly, before he returns. But people would call it unmanly for me to bite off my tongue or strangle myself. For pity’s saké, give me my sword. What good will it do me to go on living?”
So he spoke in tears, and the gathering of monks was deeply moved and wet their sleeves with weeping. When Oshichi’s parents heard of it, they came and spoke to him.
“We know your grief to be sincere, but Oshichi said many times when she died: ‘If Kichisaburo loves me truly, he will abandon the world and become a monk of some kind. That way he can look after me when I am gone, and I shall never forget him, come what may. Even in the next world our love will not die.’”
When these words of hers still did not persuade him and he seemed determined to bite off his tongue, the mother bent near to whisper something in his ear. What she said no one else knows, but after listening to her for a while, Kichisaburo nodded his head.
At last his sworn brother returned and gave his young friend much sound advice, as a result of which Kichisaburo joined the priesthood. How sad it was to see his forelock shaven! The monk who had to do it threw his razor away. It was like a sudden storm destroying the flower in full bloom. Alive though he was, Kichisaburo seemed to suffer a fate worse than Oshichi’s. People said of him that he was the prettiest priest of all time, and everyone thought it very sad.
But those whom love drives to the priesthood are good and true to their vows. The man who had been a sworn brother to Kichisaburo took the black-dyed robes himself when he returned to his old home in Matsumae.
And so this tale is told, with all its love and sadness, to show how unreal and uncertain life is, how much like a wild, fantastic dream.
Footnotes
1 Mochi—rice paste in the form of a dumpling.
2 Children blindfold themselves and pretend to be little foxes, just as American children go begging at Halloween in the guise of witches, ghosts, etc. The fox’s voice was thought to change in December so that it sounded something like “Kon, kon.”
3 From a passage in the Tsurezure-Gusa describing a popular custom on the last night of the year, when people went around with pinewood flares, knocking on doors, shouting noisily, and “scurrying about with their feet in the air” (as if flying). By this allusion Saikaku suggests the atmosphere of a roisterous and prankish New Year’s Eve.
4 These were big e
nough to hold drawers in which family valuables were kept, and so were among the first objects to be rescued in the event of fire.
5 Refers to a poem by the famous ninth-century lover Narihira, who, exiled to this region, longed for his lady in the capital (miyako) and asked the miyako bird to bring him tidings of her.
6 Considered a very disrespectful thing for a wife to do.
7 For mixing into a laxative syrup which was thought to cleanse newborn infants of impurities left in them from the womb.
8 Named after the son of Genji, Kaoru (“Fragrant”), who was known by his title, Minister of Military Affairs (Hyobukyo).
9 Every seventh day, for seven weeks after death, was a day of mourning.
10 There was a practice deriving from medieval times by which an older man exchanged a vow of lasting love with a younger one. It was generally a homosexual relationship, the elder “brother” promising to cherish and protect the younger in return for the latter’s obedience and love. When Kichisaburo fell in love with Oshichi he was breaking his earlier pledge of faithfulness to the “elder brother.”
Book Five
Gengobei, the
Mountain
of Love
1. The flute-playing ends on a sad note
There was a man named Gengobei who is still known to the world in popular songs. He was from Kagoshima in Satsuma Province and had a remarkable appetite for love considering that he came from such a remote and backward region. He wore his hair according to the fashion of his native place, down in back with a short tuft sticking up. His sword was quite long and conspicuous, but since this too was customary in his home province, people looked tolerantly upon it. Night and day he devoted himself to the love of young men. Not once in his life had he amused himself with the fragile, long-haired sex.
Five Women Who Loved Love Page 10
