Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  Later, when Moemon called from the shop in front for someone to bring him a fire to light his pipe, Rin found she was the only one in the kitchen. It was too good a chance to miss, and when she took the flame to Moemon, she gave him the letter herself. Moemon read the long, involved letter, completely unaware it was written by Osan. He thought Rin was a cute young woman, but she was only a maid, and he didn’t take her seriously. His reply was brief and quickly written.

  Unable to read the letter, Rin waited until Osan was in a good mood and asked her to read it for her. “I perused your letter,” Osan began, “and was surprised to learn of your special feelings for a person in my position. Being a clerk and still unmarried, I am not averse to responding to your wishes. If we make love often, however, we will soon be bothered by a visit from the midwife. Still, if you are prepared to pay for my robes, cloaks, visits to public baths, and personal items, then most grudgingly I will accede to your request.” It was a very blunt letter.

  “Really,” Osan said, “what a disgusting thing to write! There’s no shortage of men around, Rin. And you have decent looks. There isn’t a reason in the world you can’t get a man at least as good as this Moemon to marry you.” So Osan wrote another love letter for Rin to Moemon and then a series of letters filled with the most passionate thoughts repeated in ever new ways, all designed to deceive and seduce Moemon. Even the brush strokes in the letters were beautiful, and Moemon soon fell deeply in love with Rin and regretted his earlier insulting letter. Now his replies were filled with keenly felt emotion.

  At last Rin got a letter from Moemon suggesting a secret meeting on the night of the fourteenth of the Fifth Month. It was a night of ceremonies when people stayed up and prayed to the dawn sun, and Moemon promised to slip away at a suitable moment and meet Rin. As Osan read, she and the other women all laughed at the top of their voices.

  “Listen,” Osan said, “here’s what we ought to do. It’ll be fun and help us pass the night.”

  When the evening of the fourteenth arrived, Osan changed places with Rin, disguising herself in a simple cotton robe. She lay awake almost the whole night in the place where Rin usually slept, but no one came. At last she fell soundly asleep. All the women of the house waited according to plan in various places nearby, holding sticks, clubs, and even candleholders. At a word from Osan they would descend on Moemon and give him a well-deserved beating. But they were tired from helping with the night’s rituals, and they all began to snore where they waited.

  Sometime after the three-thirty bell, Moemon slipped away in the dark and went to Rin’s sleeping place, loosening his loincloth as he went. All he could think about was getting under the covers, and by the time he got inside he was completely naked. Burning with excitement, he made love without saying a single word to the woman he thought was Rin. As he pulled the covers back over the sleeping woman, he was momentarily surprised by a delicate scent of perfume coming from her sleeves. Then he walked back the way he’d come as softly as he could.

  There certainly are a lot of cunning people in the world, Moemon thought to himself. Rin’s so young I would never have imagined she’d be man-crazy already. I wonder what kind of men she’s done it with before me? Afraid of what he might be getting into, Moemon vowed to himself never to make love with Rin again.

  What Osan saw when she woke shocked her. Her pillow had been knocked away in a very rough way. Her sash had been untied and was nowhere in sight. Used tissue paper littered the floor. Suddenly Osan realized what had happened and was overcome with shame. There was no way, she was sure, that the others didn’t know. And there was nothing she could do about it now. So Osan decided to give up everything. She would spend the rest of her life loving Moemon, even if people called them adulterers. She made up her mind to set out on a final journey with Moemon that would end only when they both reached the other world together.46

  Resolved not to turn back, Osan told Moemon about her plan to commit love suicide together. Moemon was as amazed as she at how things had turned out. He’d started a relationship with Rin, but he realized things had gone too far with Osan already, and he changed his affections to her from that moment on. Night after night he ignored the cold looks and words he got from people in the house and went to her room. Losing their heads and leaving right and wrong behind, Osan and Moemon would soon be forced to stake their lives against all odds on a single gamble. Nothing could have been more dangerous.

  LAKE OF DECEPTION (3)

  Love drives women and men to do things beyond their comprehension or control. This can be found written even in The Tale of Genji. At Ishiyama Temple, where Murasaki Shikibu began her tale, the statue of the merciful bodhisattva Kannon was being shown to the public,47 and people from nearby Kyoto crowded into the temple. The famous cherries in the eastern hills of Kyoto were in full bloom, but on their way to the temple, people walked right by them with hardly a second look. At Kyoto’s eastern border, where a checkpoint had stood centuries before, streams of pilgrims passed out of the city and back into it, but if you looked closely, you could see that most of the pilgrims were women wearing the very latest styles. Not one looked as if she were visiting the temple to pray for rebirth in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land after she died. The women were trying so hard to look beautiful in their fine robes that Kannon, knowing what was in their minds, must have been beside herself with laughter.

  Osan, too, made a pilgrimage to Ishiyama Temple and took Moemon with her. They gazed at the cherry blossoms and felt they understood why human life was so often compared with the fragile, delicate blossoms that fell to the ground so quickly. Osan and Moemon, sure they would never again see the inlets and mountains around Lake Biwa, decided to make their last day on earth their best.

  Not far from the temple, in Seta, they left Osan’s attendants behind and rented a small fishing boat. As they rowed out onto the lake, they passed the Seta Long Bridge.48 It made them wish they could be together alone forever, although they knew that could never happen. With little time left in this world, they lay down in the boat and made love on the water, rocked by the waves. By the time the boat passed Toko Mountain, Osan’s hair was so wild that people could have seen it from shore. Later, trying to make herself neat again, Osan could barely see her worried face in the tear-streaked surface of her mirror, while on the shore, clouds closed around Kagami49 Mountain. When they passed Shark Point,50 its name reminded Osan of the extreme danger they were in. Even the sounds of boatmen calling to one another at Katada51 Inlet frightened her—were they people from Kyoto in pursuit? As she gazed at Nagara52 Mountain, she found herself wishing she could somehow, after all this, live a long life. But how could that possibly happen? Beyond Nagara rose Mount Hiei, imposing yet only a twentieth the height of Mount Fuji. She wasn’t even twenty yet herself, but she was about to disappear as quickly as the last trace of snow on Hiei’s peak. Again and again she cried into her sleeves.

  They passed the shore along which the Shiga capital53 had once stood. But the court had disappeared forever, leaving only legends. Soon, Osan thought, they’ll talk about us as though we were nothing but people in legends, and she grew even more melancholy.

  Osan, Moemon, and Osan’s attendants sightsee on Lake Biwa. Osan (left), with a cap and outer cloak, sits on a small rug near Moemon, who wears his finest short sword. Behind her sits Rin and other household women, with two male servants in the stern. The boat nears Seta Long Bridge. On shore is the Ishiyama Temple compound.

  Evening was approaching by the time they arrived at the Shirahige Shrine along the shore, and lanterns were being hung up in front of the main shrine and in the trees around it. They made their prayers to the shrine god, a white-bearded deity believed to grant long life. Long life? The thought made them feel even closer to death.

  “Whatever happens to us,” Osan told Moemon, “I’m very sure of one thing. The longer we live, the more we’re going to suffer. Let’s jump into the lake together and live forever as wife and husband in the Pure Land along
with all the buddhas.”

  “Please don’t think I’m attached to living,” Moemon said, “but considering all we’ve done, I don’t think it’s the Pure Land we’ll be heading for after we die. I have an idea, though. We’ll leave a joint message addressed to the people back in Kyoto, and then we’ll start a rumor that we’ve committed double suicide by jumping into the lake. Meanwhile we’ll go somewhere far away. Anywhere, who cares where. That way we’ll be able to live the rest of our lives together.”

  Osan was overjoyed. “Actually,” she said, “I’ve been thinking something similar, myself, ever since we left the house. Inside the luggage box there are five hundred gold coins. I put them there.”

  “Then we have something to live on!” Moemon said. “We’d better get ready to leave this place.”

  Together the two left a final message. “Evil thoughts,” they wrote, “came into our minds, and we have committed adultery. We fully realize we cannot escape the punishment of heaven, and there is no place in this world left for us to go. Today we take our leave of it.”

  Each left behind things people would recognize. Osan took off the two-inch buddha statue she always wore around her neck for protection and placed it together with some strands of her hair. Moemon left behind his best short sword, made by the famous swordsmith Seki Izumi no Kami.54 It was ornamented with bronze and had a fine iron hand guard engraved with a coiled dragon. And under a willow beside the lake, they placed two outer cloaks, a pair of women’s brightly colored sandals, and a pair of men’s leather sandals. Then, very secretly, they met with two local fishermen who were skilled at diving off high rocks. After they paid them a sizable sum and explained the job, the fishermen accepted willingly. The men then hid and waited for the agreed-on time to arrive.

  Osan and Moemon made their preparations, taking care to leave open the woven-branch door of the simple house where they and the servants were staying the night. When they were ready, they shook everyone inside awake and told them they were in a hopeless situation and were going to end their own lives. Before anyone could stop them, they ran outside through the open door. Faint voices chanting Amida Buddha’s name were soon heard from the top of a steep crag, and then the sounds of two bodies hitting the surface of the lake. While everyone was shouting and wailing, Moemon, with Osan on his back, made his way through the underbrush at the foot of the mountain and disappeared into a thick grove of cedars. The two divers, meanwhile, swam a great distance underwater and came ashore in a place no one could have connected with the splashes.

  Osan’s attendants struck their hands together in grief. They asked the local fishermen to look for the bodies in various places, but none of the searches turned up anything. It was already dawn by then, so they gathered up what the two had left behind and carried it in a bundle back to Kyoto. There they related what had happened, and the people in both houses were sworn to strict secrecy about the shameful incident. The world, however, has sharp ears. Rumors about Osan and Moemon spread in no time, and the two became a standard topic of New Year’s small talk year after year. Still, it couldn’t have been otherwise. The two truly were adulterers.

  A TEAHOUSE WHERE THEY’D NEVER SEEN GOLD COINS (4)

  Osan and Moemon headed northwest into Tanba Province, staying away from roads and walking through field after field of high grass. When they reached a high mountain, Moemon held Osan’s hand, and finally they reached the top. They never stopped looking back anxiously as they went. They’d chosen to do this, but only now did they begin to realize how hard it would to be to live on in the world after they’d already died.

  Soon there were not even woodcutters’ tracks to follow. Osan and Moemon wandered on completely lost, despairing of ever finding their way again. Finally Osan’s strength gave out, and her woman’s body in great pain, she collapsed. Her breathing grew fainter and didn’t seem as if it could last much longer. Moemon grieved to see her completely pale face, and with a leaf, he cupped water trickling from some rocks and poured it into her mouth. He tried to revive Osan in many other ways as well, but her pulse grew steadily weaker.

  Moemon had nothing with him he could use as medicine, and he resigned himself to waiting for Osan’s life to end. But then he leaned close to her ear and whispered, “We only need to go a little farther. Up ahead there’s a village where I know someone. If we can just get that far, we’ll be able to sleep together and forget all this.”

  Osan seemed to have heard what Moemon had said. Then she spoke. “You make me very happy,” she said. “You love me more than your own life.” Soon she felt much better, and her whole soul filled with desire. Moemon could see how much she wanted him then, and that made him want to care for her all the more. He carried her on his back as he had earlier, and they continued on through the forest.

  Soon they reached the hedge around a house in a small mountain village along a road. Moemon asked and learned that this was the main pack road leading from Tanba to Kyoto. It was only just wide enough for two horses to squeeze past each other, and in places it wound around the edges of steep cliffs. Finally they saw a small, thatched house with bundles of cedar needles hanging from the eaves and a sign saying “Best-Quality Saké.” The once-white rice cakes for sale at the entrance were covered with many days’ worth of dust. The other side of the small house was a tea shop that also sold tea whisks, painted clay dolls, and toy drums from Kyoto. These reminded Osan and Moemon of home, and as they rested and drank their tea, their spirits rose. In their exuberance, they gave the old man who ran the teahouse a gold coin, but the surprised man scowled and said gruffly, “Please, pay for your tea!” The place couldn’t have been forty miles from Kyoto, yet the people here had never seen gold coins. Osan and Moemon thought it quite amusing.

  They continued on to a place called Kayabara, where they went to the house of Moemon’s aunt, whom he hadn’t seen for many years. He wasn’t even sure she was still alive. She was, and soon they were talking about the old days. The woman treated Moemon warmly, since he was her nephew. She went on and on about Moemon’s father Mosuke, and they spent the whole night talking, stopping only to clear tears from their eyes. Around dawn, Moemon’s aunt became curious about the attractive woman he was with and asked who she was. Moemon hadn’t thought through an answer to this question yet and was caught off guard.

  Moemon carries Osan on his back in the mountains of Tanba. At the top of the slope stands a small teahouse with an iron pot of water over a stove. Teacups are on a rack to the right. Two horsemen, one with a whip in hand, lead packhorses loaded with crates.

  “Oh, she’s my younger sister,” he answered, saying the first thing that came into his mind. “She served for several years in an aristocrat’s mansion, but she felt very depressed by the solemn, formal life in the capital. She’s left Kyoto because she’d rather marry a man living in a quiet mountain village like this. She says she’d like to work in the kitchen of a farmhouse from now on and doesn’t care about her husband’s social class, no matter how low it is. That’s why I brought her here. She has a dowry of two hundred gold coins with her.”

  People everywhere are moved by greed, and Moemon’s aunt was no exception. The dowry was simply too good for her to ignore. “Well,” she said, “this really is a stroke of good luck. My only son still isn’t married yet, you know. Moemon, you’re kin, so please bless their marriage and do your part to help out.”

  Things were going from bad to worse. Osan cried, but she hid her tears. Late that night, while she was still trying to think of a way to avoid the marriage, the woman’s son came back. He looked ferocious. He was very tall, and the wavy hair standing out from his head made him look like a lion. His beard was thick as a bear’s, and his bloodshot eyes gleamed brightly. His arms and legs were as gnarled and sinewed as pine trees; his clothes were made from rags; and his belt was braided from strips of wisteria bark. With one hand he held a rifle and cotton fuses; with the other, a straw bag full of dead rabbits and raccoons. He obviously made his living a
s a hunter.

  The man introduced himself. His name, he said, was Cliff-Leaping Zetarō, and he was the toughest and meanest man in the village. But when his mother told him he had a chance to marry a woman from Kyoto, even this fearsome, grimy brute was delighted.

  “If it’s good,” he exclaimed, “grab it while you can. That’s what I always say. Let’s have the wedding tonight!” The man looked almost gentle as he took out his pocket mirror and examined his face.

  His mother immediately began preparing for the ritual exchange of saké that would seal the marriage. After getting out salted tuna and an old bottle with a chipped mouth for pouring saké, she made a small wedding bedroom by partitioning off a corner of the room big enough for two people. Inside the straw standing screens, she put down two wooden pillows, two straw sleeping mats, and a striped quilt. Then she came back and lit a brazier with split pinewood kindling. That night she was in very high spirits.

  Osan was distressed, and Moemon completely gave up hope. “This all happened because I spoke without thinking,” he said. “I must have done something in a former life that made me say what I did. But still, if only I hadn’t! If I’d known something this bad was going to happen, I would have died in Lake Biwa. There’s no sense living any longer now. Heaven’s not going to let me get away!” He unsheathed his short sword and started to stand up.

  Osan pulled him back down again before he could cut himself open. “Don’t be so emotional,” she said. “Use your head. Right now I have several ideas. As soon as it starts to get light, we’ll be far away from this place. Just leave everything up to me.” This calmed Moemon’s mind.