Book 5
1
Mitsuuji did not forget the white flowers blooming forlornly on the ramshackle fence, and tonight he returned to the house on Fifth Avenue still another time, but Tasogare sat looking down at the floor, lost in thought. She was unable to say what she felt, and tears filled her eyes. Mitsuuji had come here many times, and the two had talked without reserve about their most intimate thoughts, so he could not understand why Tasogare was treating him in this way, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
Mitsuuji shows a sleeve patterned with folding fans to Shinonome (right). The pattern matches that of the faded piece beside her knee. Shinonome is wearing a robe with a crow-flock pattern, suggesting the prized sword Kogarasumaru (Small Crow), which Mitsuuji is looking for. Tasogare (left), wearing a yūgao-pattern robe, prepares the pillow in front of a vase of pampas grass and two containers of sake offerings for harvest moon viewing. The back of a folding screen appears on the upper left, with the bed on the far side.
Shinonome spoke as pleasantly as always, and now she asked her daughter to get her bed ready. In the light of a lamp nearby, Shinonome was sewing together some scraps into a lined nightgown for herself.19 Tonight was the fifteenth of the Eighth Month, and light from the full moon fell into the house between the rough boards that formed its walls. The cries of crickets in the walls, which had sounded so far away, now seemed to Mitsuuji to come from beside his pillow. Unable to sleep, he broke the silence and spoke to Shinonome.
“Those pieces of thin robe beside you,” he said, “aren’t they the same pieces I saw stretched out to dry the first night I stayed here?”
Shinonome laughed. “When I was young,” she said casually, “I had a small job in an upper-class mansion. This was something they gave me. Back then it was a respectable formal robe, but many years have gone by, and neither it nor I am any the better for it. One sleeve ripped off, so I had my daughter unstitch the other pieces and wash them so I could use them to line a nightgown.”
Mitsuuji got up and went over to her. “The sleeve that came off that nice thin robe,” he said, reaching into the front of his robe, “didn’t it have large folding fans on it in gold leaf? This must be it.” He threw a sleeve down in front of Shinonome.
Suspicious, Shinonome picked up the sleeve and examined it. “Yes, this is it,” she said. “But something’s written on one of the fan designs.” She held the sleeve close to the lamp and read out a hokku:
Coming close
you can make it out—
a crow gourd
Startled momentarily, she regained her composure, laughing as if nothing had happened. “The sleeve came apart long ago,” she said, “so I couldn’t wash it. But this sleeve you’ve given me looks a lot like it. If I sewed it onto the old pieces I have and called the robe a ‘rare historical item,’20I could probably get several gold pieces for it. Gold. Yes. Ah, I forgot! Tonight I’ve promised to go to a meeting to pray to Maitreya on the Golden Peak.21 I’ll be back late, so please make yourself at home. Praise be to Maitreya,” she chanted as she went out, “Master of the Future.”
Tasogare, tears streaking her cheeks, watched until her mother had gone. Very gently Mitsuuji came to her. “Just now,” he said, “your mother was chanting the name of the buddha who lives on the Golden Peak south of Nara. Our love, too, isn’t only for this world. Let’s promise to be true to each other forever, until Maitreya appears at the end of time. I’ve never loved anyone as deeply as I love you. We must have been brought together by some very strong karma. That night we first met, when I was traveling secretly, I felt uneasy when I lay down and couldn’t sleep. But tonight no one’s watching us. I want to take you away from here and go to a place I know well, a place where we can live peacefully together. I’ve made the arrangements already. You won’t regret it. Why are you crying?”
Finally Tasogare looked up. “You would never tell me your name,” she said, “so we had someone follow after you, trying to discover where you live. But you skillfully hid the way you came. You think I don’t know where you live. But even my fingers told me about you, and long ago I guessed you were no ordinary person. I saw Karukaya only when I was young, so I didn’t even recognize her, but she’s related to my mother, and she told her you were Mitsuuji. My mother never talks about the past, so recently I asked next door, but you had asked Korekichi not to say anything. I had no idea you were the younger son of the shōgun. I was very surprised when I heard who you were. Very. Each time you stopped at our rundown house, though, I realized your feelings for me had not changed, and you became more and more dear to me. But there’s something else. Mother’s involved in some very bad things. I couldn’t possibly betray her and tell you about them, but the thought of your staying in this house with her knowing who you are—it frightens me.” Tasogare began to weep again.
Mitsuuji understood why she was crying, and he smiled.
3
“I’m an old fox,” Mitsuuji joked. “Please allow me to show you a few tricks.” He pulled some standing screens in front of their bed, and soon their voices could be heard no more. After a while, Shinonome made her way stealthily back to her house together with two well-known toughs in the area with whom she’d been negotiating. Once inside, she whispered into their ears, and they both nodded back. But when the toughs kicked over the standing screens, Tasogare wasn’t there. Instead they found a calm young samurai snoring soundly.
“Ah!” Shinonome cried. “Tasogare’s gone, and that Mitsuuji, he’s disappeared, too. Look, there’s a hole in the back wall. Tasogare’s fallen under his spell, and she’s told him all about my plan. It makes me so angry I can’t stand it.” She stood clenching her fists.
The thugs were also shocked. “I was really looking forward to the money we’d get for catching the man alive,” one said, “and my muscles are popping out, just waiting for a good fight. We can’t give up now.”
“Let’s rough up this young guy a bit,” the other said, “and force him to tell us where Mitsuuji’s run off to. He’s got a lot of nerve, lying there snoring as if nothing’s happened. Let’s remodel his face for him.”
Just as the toughs attacked, the young samurai leaped up, dodged them, and, as they passed by him, sent them flying head over heels. Then he stood straight up and said in a resounding voice, “You must be Shinonome. Well, listen carefully. I serve the Ashikaga, and my name is Akamatsu Takanao.22 Do you really think Mitsuuji would be so careless as to come here alone? His retainers have quietly placed themselves all around the house, and they’ve been keeping watch all night. Mitsuuji suspects you, and he asked me to question you, so I came here with a large company of men. We have the house surrounded, so there’s no way you can escape. And your daughter Tasogare, well, Mitsuuji’s taken her away. She’s his hostage now. There’s nothing you can do any more, so tell me about yourself. Everything.”
Shinonome (left) and two very muscular toughs, each with a stick in hand, are ready to attack Mitsuuji and Tasogare. One of the toughs has removed the ceremonial paper streamers from the sacred saké container and is drinking the saké.
While Takanao was talking, the two toughs got up and rushed at him again with all their might. He could easily have driven them off, but he needed them as evidence, so he grabbed their thrusting hands and twisted them until the men went down to the floor. Then he sat on them; neither was able to move.
Shinonome’s face showed her anger. “Just now, when I was coming back,” she said to herself, “I saw two people walking along, hiding their faces. I thought it was very strange, but the moon went behind some clouds, so when I passed them I couldn’t see who they were. That must have been my daughter and Mitsuuji. They were headed for a narrow path between rice paddies, and I know where it goes. It’s that old temple out in the fields. Yes, yes!” She ran into a closet and came out with a bundle under her arm. She left the room so quickly she seemed to fly.
4
While Shinonome was away, Mitsuuji had broken a hole in the bac
k wall of the bedroom, but once outside he realized that even though he had carefully disguised himself, the gold ornaments on his fine sword glinted conspicuously in the bright moonlight. So he pulled down one of the reed screens hanging from the eaves and quickly wrapped it around himself and Tasogare. For a while, he pushed between the low limbs of some pine trees, carrying Tasogare. He then put her down lightly, and they walked hand in hand, unsure of their way. In the other direction they saw Shinonome coming toward them with two gruesome-looking men. But before Shinonome caught sight of them, clouds covered the moon, and they moved to the side of the road to let her and the thugs pass by.
Akamatsu Takanao beats the toughs and throws one against the folded screen (right). The large hole through which Mitsuuji and Tasogare escaped appears behind the bed (top right). To the left, Shinonome escapes with a hannya (female demon) mask in her mouth and a small bundle under her arm. The way she tucks her sash and steps out with one foot up resembles the okkake (chase) pose in kabuki performances.
Then they began walking along a narrow path through deserted fields, pushing through long wild grass until they no longer knew where they were. They could hear the sounds of women fulling their white cotton robes, and in the distance wild geese cried out to one another high in the sky.
5
Although the pure white moon shone brilliantly, a breeze began to blow, and they found themselves in a sudden rain shower. And there, beside the path, stood a stone statue of the gentle bodhisattva Jizō.23 Regarding this as a sign of good karma, Mitsuuji took the wide sedge hat that a pilgrim had placed on the statue and held it above their heads.
Mitsuuji and Tasogare, wrapping themselves in a reed screen, walk barefoot through the wild grass. Caught in a sudden rain shower, Mitsuuji looks enviously at the sedge hat on a stone statue of a Jizō bodhisattva. A stone bridge leads to the entrance of an old temple on the far left.
“Look,” he said, “someone wrote ‘Paradise in the next life’ and ‘We two traveling together’24 on it. That means we’ll both go to the Pure Land paradise after we die and live together happily in the next life, too. Please don’t lose hope.” Mitsuuji tried to encourage Tasogare as much as he could, but he had never been on this path before, and he himself felt uneasy and didn’t know what to do next. Tasogare felt anxious about many things, but above all she worried about how far she had come with Mitsuuji and what might happen between them in the future, and she stood still, unable to go on, her sleeves more wet from her own tears than from the rain.
Then Mitsuuji made out the faint flame of a lamp flickering up ahead. “Ah!” he said, “there’s a big temple up there. I used to know the head monk very well, but he died, and no one lives there any more. I heard it was abandoned, but there must be a monk still living in it. Let’s stay there for the night. When it gets light, I’ll take you the rest of the way to Saga.” Mitsuuji and Tasogare kept following the path, which led to the temple that Shinonome had predicted they would reach. They went through the desolate front gate and pushed through the dew-wet grass in the temple garden. Mitsuuji wrapped his two swords in the hanging screen.
Tasogare sits in a sensuous pose and wipes her feet with her apron as Mitsuuji and the caretaker monk converse in the other room. The exposed walls and the overgrown wild grass reveal a temple going to ruin.
“Hello!” he called out. “Is there a caretaker here?” When a monk appeared, Mitsuuji told him, “I’m a merchant who often goes up to Muromachi Avenue.25 But I’m having trouble paying back a loan, and the collectors are coming to my house, so my older sister and I, well, we have to stay away tonight. I remembered the head monk of this temple. We used to be good friends while he was alive, so I came here, hoping we could stay the night.”
Mitsuuji made up a very smooth excuse, but the monk had been to the Muromachi shōgunal palace the year before with the former head monk, and he soon recognized Mitsuuji. He moved back and bowed very respectfully. “I am honored by your visit,” he said, “but it is most unexpected. I would like to invite you to the reception room, but the roof leaks. It looked like we’d have a hard rain, so I took out all the straw floor mats and put them in a dry place. But it’s cleared up again already, so I’ll go put the room in order. Please wait here for a while until it’s ready.” The monk led them to a small, dark room beside the main prayer hall and then ran off.
An unknown female figure appears before Tasogare (right) while a large paper hanging lantern swings ominously. Mitsuuji watches the lantern, his sword wrapped in reed blinds to his right.
Tasogare was timid and easily became afraid. The place terrified her, and suddenly she put her body against Mitsuuji’s. “Listen,” she said, “you can hear someone’s loud footsteps behind us. They’re coming closer and closer.” She seemed to be in a daze and began shaking all over.
Mitsuuji smiled. “You’re worrying too much,” he said. “There’s someone in the kitchen, but who would come over here? Hold on tight to me. I have a question for you. We’ve told each other everything without holding anything back, but you’ve never mentioned anything about your family. Tell me, what was your father’s name?”
Tasogare sighed. “My father was an ordinary fisherman,” she said faintly, “who spent his life wandering here and there. I’m ashamed to tell you this, but he was just a commoner. We don’t even have a family name.” She looked behind her again and again as she spoke. Mitsuuji stood up and opened the wooden doors between the room and the porch outside.
“If the darkness frightens you, come over here,” he said, walking with her to the porch. The moon shone down even more brightly than before. The grass and trees in the old garden grew wildly, without any hint of beauty. Water weeds filled the pond, and the fence had been blown down by the wind. Autumn fields stretched for as far as they could see. There was something eerie about the temple. Mitsuuji closed the paper-covered sliding doors, but wind came in between the cracks, causing the lamp to flicker repeatedly. A strip of paper dangling from a ripped standing screen swayed back and forth like a tuft of long grass, and Tasogare felt it was calling to her. The room became completely quiet, and then suddenly—was it a shadow?—a woman’s shape appeared. It glared at Mitsuuji.
“You saw me in a dream,” she said, “when you stayed overnight at Fifth Avenue. As I said then, I am deeply offended that you have abandoned me for a woman who doesn’t even come from a good family. And now you have brought her all the way here.” Then she disappeared as quickly as she had come.
7
Mitsuuji had heard about this kind of thing happening in old tales, but it was very odd and even suspicious to see something like this in front of his eyes. When he turned around to see if Tasogare was all right, he found her lying face down on the floor beside him. Anxiously he tried to raise her up, but her body lay limp on the floor. She didn’t seem to be breathing. Tasogare must have seen the strange shape, too, and fainted. Mitsuuji was frantic but didn’t know what to do. The flame in the lantern that hung from the eaves had gone out, and he couldn’t see where anything was.
“Someone! Bring a lamp!” he said, clapping his hands loudly. But all he could hear were echoes, so he kicked open the inner and outer sliding doors. Moonlight fell into the room, and he groped around and found a bowl of tea placed as an offering in front of a mortuary tablet. He splashed the tea on Tasogare’s face and said her name again and again, trying to call her soul back to her body.
At last, Tasogare regained consciousness. “Are you Mitsuuji?” she asked. “I saw a vision of some woman I’d never seen before. She stared at me in a very threatening way. Her face was so horrible I couldn’t stand it. After that I don’t remember anything.” Her body shook as she lay there.
Trying to encourage her, Mitsuuji spoke loudly and firmly. “In old abandoned buildings like this,” he said, “foxes and other wild animals are known to take mysterious shapes and frighten humans. But as long as I’m here with you, I won’t let anything harm you. Look, I can see a lamp coming in our dire
ction along that passageway from the building over there. It must be the monk. He recognizes me, so please don’t act helpless in front of him, or he’ll laugh at both of us.”
Strengthened by Mitsuuji’s words, Tasogare calmed down by the time the monk arrived.
Mitsuuji takes from the altar a bowl filled with tea to revive Tasogare. Mortuary tablets and a stand for tea bowls lie scattered on the floor. Beneath the altar, parts of the lotus painting have come off. Various announcements for prayers and the building of new temple compounds hold together the adjacent wall, further accentuating the temple’s desolate state.
“I didn’t realize your lamp was out,” the monk said. “You must have felt pretty miserable out here. I’ve put the reception room back together, so please come with me.” He led them to what looked like the visitors’ hall. Unlike the previous room, this one was beautifully decorated and furnished, but rain had leaked through the roof and formed streaks like long strands of the Nunobiki Waterfall down the pictures painted on the sliding doors. The handles of the doors had come off, and moonlight fell here and there onto the floor, making the room resemble the famous moonlit paddies on the lower slopes of Mount Obasute. Soon the monk brought them some rice gruel and fruit he had prepared.
“Which door did you come in by?” the monk asked. “I can’t find your shoes.” The monk looked here and there, but Mitsuuji knew his reputation would be damaged if he let on that they had rushed off without even putting on shoes, and he made only vague replies. The monk, however, tried even harder to please him. “Well,” he said, “first of all, let me put your hat over here.” But as he lifted the hat, he saw what was written on it and stared at the words with a puzzled expression. Then he gathered up their other things, even the apron Tasogare had tossed away after she had wiped off the mud on her feet with it. Then the monk placed a standing screen around the couple to give them some privacy. Mitsuuji could see that the monk thought he had come here secretly with a commoner lover, and he felt so ashamed that sweat soon covered his forehead.
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 115