The Demon at Agi Bridge and Other Japanese Tales (Translations from the Asian Classics)

by Philip K. Dick

  After making certain that the lackey was out of sight, the poor man washed his hands, faced in the direction of Hase Temple, and voiced this prayer: “Please bring this horse back to life!” He had no sooner done so than the horse opened its eyes, lifted its head, and struggled to get up. With a boost from the man, it rose to its feet. The man, pleased beyond measure, thought, “Other people may be coming along, or that fellow might return!” Conscious of such dangers, he moved to a spot where he and the horse would be out of sight and rested for a while. When the horse had fully recovered, he led it to a place where there were tradesmen, exchanged a bolt of cloth for a bit and a cheap saddle, mounted the horse, and rode off.

  Heading for the capital, the man had ridden as far as Uji by the time the sun went down. That night, he found lodging in a nearby house and exchanged a bolt of cloth for fodder for the horse and something to eat for himself. The next morning, he set off very early for the capital. Around the vicinity of Kujō,10 he came upon a house whose owner was preparing to go somewhere. “I could go on to the capital,” thought the poor man, “but there might be people there who know the horse and think that I stole it, which would not be good. I wonder if I couldn’t sell it?” Looking around for someone who might want a horse, he dismounted and casually approached the owner of the house. “Would you like to buy a horse?” he asked. A horse was in fact just what the man needed. “How much is it?” he asked excitedly. “At the moment, I don’t have any silk or other goods to pay for it, but I could give you some of the rice fields and rice around Toba in exchange for it.”11 The poor man had bigger things than silk in mind, but he said, “Actually silk or money is what I need. Since I’m on a trip, I don’t know what I would do with rice fields. However, if you really need the horse, I suppose I could go along with your offer.”

  The owner of the house mounted the horse and tried riding it around. “As fine as I could have hoped for!” he exclaimed. Then he arranged to give the poor man three chō12 of rice fields in nearby Toba and added some rice plants and polished rice to the bargain. In the end, he turned his house over to the man as well. “If I live long enough to come back to the capital, you can return the house to me then,” he said. “And if I don’t come back, you can go on living here. If I should die meanwhile, the house will be yours. I don’t have any children, so there would be no one else to claim it.” Thus he left the poor man in charge of the house and shortly after departed from the capital.

  The poor man moved into the house and stored the rice and rice plants, and since there was only himself to feed, he had plenty to eat. In the meantime, some of the local people came to work for him, so he was able to live very comfortably.

  When the Second Month planting season came around, he lent out half of the fields he had received to others to cultivate, and kept half for his own use. The fields farmed by others did well enough, producing what was an average crop for the time. His own fields, however, were quite amazingly productive, and he harvested any number of rice plants and stored them. From this time on, good fortune, as though blown by the wind, seemed to gather around him, and he became a man of great wealth. No word ever came from the former owner, and the man thus gained full possession of the house. In time, he acquired children and grandchildren and is said to have prospered in a quite remarkable fashion.

  How a Priest Falsely Stated That He Would Drown Himself (133)

  This, too, happened long ago. A saintly member of the Buddhist clergy announced that he would drown himself in the Katsura River.13 Before he did so, however, he held a hundred-days repentance service at Gidarin Temple.14 People flocked from near and far to attend, and the endless procession of carriages carrying women eager to express their devotion made the roads all but impassable.

  Look at him and you see a priest something over thirty, slender in build. He does not look others directly in the eye but keeps his eyes half closed, and from time to time speaks the words “Amida Buddha!” In between such utterances, you just see his lips moving, presumably because he is reciting the nembutsu.15 At other times, he heaves a deep sigh and gazes about at the faces of those gathered around him. At such moments, those in his presence crowd closer, pushing and jostling for position, endeavoring to catch his eye.16

  At dawn of the day scheduled for the suicide, the priest entered the hall of the temple, where a number of other priests had gathered, and they formed a long procession emerging from the temple. At the tail end of the procession, the priest rode in a baggage cart, dressed in paper robes and a surplice. His lips appeared to be uttering words of some kind. He did not look directly at those about him, but now and then heaved a profound sigh.

  The crowds that had gathered along the way to watch threw handfuls of rice that pelted him like showers of hail.17 But from time to time he would say, “Oh no—these only get in my eyes and nose and trouble me greatly! If you wish to make a contribution, please wrap your offerings in a paper envelope and deliver them to the temple where I have been residing.” At these words, all the dullards in the crowd pressed their palms together in reverent awe. But those who were a bit brighter whispered among themselves. “That’s strange!” they said. “Why does the holy man say that? He’s on his way now to drown himself, yet he says to send the rice offerings to the Gidarin because they get in his eyes and nose and bother him!”

  The procession advanced along Shichijō18 until the participants reached the west end of the avenue. Here were gathered even greater crowds than in the capital, more people than there were stones in the riverbed, all come to offer obeisance and watch “the holy man enter the water.” The carts and carriages that had carried the participants were pushed onto the bank of the river, whereupon the holy man asked, “What time is it now?” The priests attending him replied, “The Hour of the Monkey is drawing to a close.”19 “It’s too early for rebirth in the Western Paradise,” said the holy man. “Let’s wait until a little later.” Some of those who had come a long way to observe the proceedings, tired of waiting, gave up and went home, and the crowd in the riverbed thinned out somewhat. But others, determined to see how things would turn out, remained standing. Among the priests in the company, some muttered, “Is there a fixed time for rebirth in the Western Paradise? We never heard of that!”

  After some time had passed, [the party having set out in a boat,] the holy man, stripped down to a loincloth, faced west and dove plop into the water. But his foot became entangled in a line on the gunwale of the boat and he hung there, thrashing around without going under the surface. One of his disciples freed his foot, whereupon he toppled head over heels into the river, gasping and floundering about. A man who, hoping to get a better view, had climbed down into the riverbed and was standing in a shallow spot nearby took hold of the holy man’s hand and pulled him to his feet. The priest, using both hands, wiped the water from his face, spat out a mouthful of river water and, turning to the man who had pulled him out of the water and rubbing his palms together in appreciation, said, “I am immensely grateful to you! I will repay your kindness when I reach the Western Paradise!” Then he scrambled as fast as he could up the riverbank.

  The people who had gathered to watch, along with the young boys in the crowd, began to pick up stones from the riverbed and shower the holy man with them. The “Master of the Dharma,” naked, raced off down the riverbed, the onlookers one after another hurling stones after him until they had smashed him in the head.

  This must be the Master of the Dharma whom people are referring to when they send a gift of a melon from Yamato and write in the message that accompanies it, “This goes in the water, like His Eminence of recent times.”20

  1.A wen is a kind of fukurami (swelling) and hence perhaps suggests the word fuku (good fortune).

  2.Ikenoo is in Uji. The title Naigu (Palace Chaplain) indicates that he was qualified to take part in religious activities in the imperial palace, a mark of high honor.

  3.Part of the humor derives from the sudden and deplorable change in Zenchin’s at
titude. The prohibition against anger was one of the ten most important precepts of Buddhism.

  4.Fudō (Acalanātha), “the Immovable,” is one of the most important guardian deities of the Buddhist religion. He is customarily depicted in a threatening posture, holding a sword and backed by raging flames.

  5.Copper shavings were believed to be efficacious in healing broken bones.

  6.Kihada is the bark of the Chinese cork tree, a bitter ingredient used in Chinese medicine.

  7.Hase is a famous Buddhist temple in the mountains south of Nara. From early times, it has been the object of pilgrimages. It houses a statue of Kannon (the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara), or Perceiver of the World’s Sounds, who is believed to heed the cries of sufferers and grant them aid.

  8.Although a woman of means, she evidently was proceeding on foot as a sign of respect for Hase Temple, to which she was journeying.

  9.The Hour of the Dragon is 7:00 to 9:00 a.m.

  10.Kujō (Ninth Avenue) was the southern limit of the capital.

  11.Toba is the agricultural region just south of the capital.

  12.A chō, here a measure of land area (not of length), is about two and a half acres. Three chō would not have been a very large plot, although presumably its value was enhanced by its proximity to the capital.

  13.The Katsura is a shallow river that flows south on the western side of Kyoto. At the time of the story, it was widely believed that persons who called on the aid of Amida Buddha would at death be reborn in Amida’s Western Paradise, where enlightenment is relatively easy to achieve. Some people, unwilling to await a natural death, committed suicide as a mark of their faith in Amida’s power.

  14.Gidarin Temple, founded in 1000 C.E., was in the southeastern section of the capital. The hundred-day service involved the recitation of the Lotus Sutra and the performance of rites of repentance.

  15.The recitation of the words Namu Amida Butsu, or “Hail to Amida Buddha,” is the main devotional practice of the followers of Amida.

  16.Catching his eye would form a bond with him and confer a blessing.

  17.Their offerings were in recognition of the religious act that he was about to perform.

  18.Shichijō (Seventh Avenue) was one of the main east–west streets in the capital. The Katsura River was situated at the western end of the avenue.

  19.The Hour of the Monkey is 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

  20.Melons, a specialty of Yamato Province, customarily are chilled in water before being eaten.

  A COMPANION IN SOLITUDE

  KANKYO NO TOMO

  A Companion in Solitude (Kankyo no tomo, ca. 1222) is a two-volume collection of Buddhist setsuwa written by Priest Keisei (1189–1268). The twenty-one stories in volume 1 are about noted recluses and priests such as Kūya (903–972). Volume 2, by contrast, contains eleven stories about women and their search for religious enlightenment. The collection is unusual in that nearly an entire volume is devoted to female protagonists.

  As Rajyashree Pandey points out, one of the central religious tropes around which these stories are organized is the notion of woman as the embodiment of the seven grave vices, a Buddhist-inflected view that had a profound impact on medieval discourse. The seven vices are having no hesitation in arousing sexual desire in men, being susceptible to jealousy, being deceitful, being given to self-adornment to seduce men, being trapped in the sin of attachment, allowing uncontrolled desire to result in shameless action, and being bodily unclean (due to menstruation and childbirth).1 The perceived impure and sinful nature of women was, in turn, thought to prevent them from achieving immediate buddhahood. The story “How a Woman Out of Deep Resentment Changed into a Demon in Her Present Existence” (2:3) looks at what happens to a woman’s body as a result of her succumbing to one of these vices. Confrontation with a decaying body was often used as a means to awaken the observer to the true nature of the human body, particularly that of women. In the tale “How a Court Lady of Royal Birth Demonstrated the Foulness of Her Bodily Form” (2:9), which expands on the notion of impurity in woman, a refined woman decides to cure a transgressive priest of his deluded attachment to her by presenting herself to him as a repugnant and putrid figure.

  How a Woman Out of Deep Resentment Changed into a Demon in Her Present Existence (2:3)

  This is reported to have happened in Mino Province some time ago. It concerns a man of no little social standing who had been in the habit of making frequent visits to a certain man’s daughter at her parents’ home in that province.2 But he had to go a considerable distance and could not visit her as often as he would have liked. She, perhaps because she was not familiar with the manner in which such liaisons were conducted, became thoroughly disheartened with the way their affair was progressing. And in their meetings, infrequent as they were, she seemed to see signs of waning affection. The man, too, became fearful of where the affair was heading.

  As the grasses wither when winter comes, so their relationship withered away, and the woman ceased to eat anything at all. And as, with the arrival of spring, people become engrossed in their various tasks, so those around the woman, busy as they were, failed even to notice that she had stopped eating.

  She spent all her time hidden behind screens, wrapped in layers of bedding, and others in the house, heartless, took no further notice of her. Then one day, someone left a bucket of sweet syrup near where she was hiding. Seizing the bucket, she twisted her hair into the shape of five topknots and plastered them with syrup, so when they dried, they stood up like horns. No one in the household was even aware of what she was doing. Then she put on a pair of scarlet trousers, crept out of the house, and disappeared.3

  No one knew what had become of her. “She’s just disappeared,” they said. “All because of that worthless man, she probably gave up in despair and threw herself into some river or deep pond!” Although they searched for her body, they of course were never able to find it. And so time went by, the months and years piled up, until the woman’s parents had passed away.

  It must have been some thirty years later when, in the same province, word got around that there was a demon living in a half-ruined Buddhist hall that stood far out in the fields. Everyone said that it lived by seizing and feeding on the young of the horses and cows raised in the area. “It hides up in the ceiling of the hall,” reported persons who had observed the building from a distance.

  A number of the villagers got together to discuss the matter. “If that’s the case, why don’t we just set fire to the hall? We can pitch in later and rebuild it. Only if we burned it out of ill will toward the Buddha would there be any blame in it!” They fixed on a day for the action, and then armed themselves with bows and quivers, filled in whatever gaps there were in their protective clothing, and gathered around.

  They had set fire to the hall and it was half burned when a creature, indescribably weird, with five horns on its head and dressed in scarlet trousers, came rushing down from the ceiling of the hall. “That must be it!” they exclaimed, aiming their bows at it.

  “Give me a moment to speak!” said the creature. “Don’t kill me before I’ve had a chance to explain!”

  “What sort of being are you?” they asked.

  “I am the daughter of So-and-so of such-and-such a place,” the creature said. “Giving way to feelings that I now regret, I carried out various actions, leaving my home to do so. And in the end, I killed that man I was involved with. After that, I found that I could never return to my original form. I couldn’t bear to let ordinary people see me, I had no place to go, and so I hid myself in this hall of worship. But then, how hard it was for me to stay alive! My hunger at times was more than I could bear; everything about my life was a trial—I can’t tell you what hardships I endured! Night and day, my body seemed consumed in flames—regrets, evils that never came to an end.

  “So I beg you, people, come together, whatever you do, and with all your hearts spend one whole day writing out passages from the Lotus Sutra for my sake, a final memor
ial in my name. And those among you, those who have wives and children—you must see that my story is spread abroad as widely as possible. Warn people that they must never under any circumstances do as I have done!”

  And when she had spoken these words, tears streaming down her face, she leaped into the flames and burned to death.

  It was a frightening affair, but at the same time a sad one. Deeply vexed in spirit, she had allowed herself to be led astray by a moment’s misapprehension, and thus condemned herself to long years of suffering. How regrettable, and how tragic! It is hardly likely that she fared well in her next existence. Perhaps prayers were said on her behalf, though I do not recall the person who told me her story making any mention of them.

  How a Court Lady of Royal Birth Demonstrated the Foulness of Her Bodily Form (2:9)

  Long ago, there was a certain Buddhist monk, a person of distinction, who fell in love with a court lady of royal birth. When he could no longer restrain himself, he spoke to her and told her of the depth of his emotion. After hesitating for a moment, she said, “There’s no reason to be so deeply troubled. I will be leaving court and returning to my home soon, and I will be sure to let you know when I do so.” The monk had at first thought of it as perhaps no more than a passing fancy, but, having confessed his love, he now felt more strongly drawn to the woman than ever.

  Shortly after, the lady sent word that she had left the court and returned to her home. “Tonight I will be at such-and-such a place,” she said. The monk accordingly made his preparations and set off to meet her there.

  When he met her, she said, “I have arranged to meet you here because the matter we have to discuss is of such gravity. This body of mine is a thing putrid and rotten beyond description. My head is filled to overflowing with brain matter and other fluids; my skin is stuffed with flesh and bones. Blood flows from my body; pus oozes out—there’s nothing here you would want to come close to for an instant. Such being the case, I borrow various external substances to perfume my body and make it more seemly, so it will somehow appear attractive. But if you were to see my true form, you would most certainly find it frightening and repulsive!”