Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  “Then I’m not the only one!” she exclaimed out loud. “Not the only one who came to this mountain to forget the world . . . and be forgotten by it.” Then she went inside and sat down. Yatsufusa followed her and sat quietly nearby.

  When Fusehime left her father’s castle in Takita, she took nothing with her but the eight volumes of the Lotus Sutra, some good-quality paper for copying it out, and a brush and inkstone set. Feeling lonely and depressed, Fusehime spent her first night at the front of the cave reading the Lotus Sutra by the light of the moon. Around her neck she wore the string of crystal prayer beads she had received as a girl from the mountain god En no Gyōja.4 Shortly after the dog had killed her father’s enemy, the eight largest of the beads—each of which had earlier displayed a written character with one of the eight Confucian virtues5—had suddenly shown eight characters forming the words “Animals can achieve enlightenment.” All Fusehime had to protect her now were gods and buddhas.

  Yatsufusa probably understands human language perfectly, Fusehime thought to herself. Surely he understood me when I told him I wouldn’t go with him unless he promised not to come near me. Still, he’s just an animal. He may have brought me all the way here into these mountains as a trick. And even if he has no bad intentions, he may be unable to control his desire for me. He may forget the vow of spiritual respect he made to me before we left my father’s castle. If he gives in to lust and comes anywhere near me, he’ll be guilty of deceiving his master. I’ll have to stab him.

  Fusehime’s heart was pounding, but she managed to calm herself. As inconspicuously as she could, she untied the string around the opening of the pouch in her robe that held her dagger, and she took the weapon out. She placed it beside her right hand and went on chanting the Lotus Sutra.

  Yatsufusa had been watching Fusehime, and he must have understood what she was thinking, because he did not try to approach her. He lay still, gazing at her face with an expression of deep longing. From time to time he got up, but he never stopped staring. His tongue hung out of his wide-open mouth, he drooled, he licked his fur, and he licked his nose, all the while watching Fusehime and breathing hard. Yatsufusa stared at Fusehime desirously through the night.

  Early the next morning, Yatsufusa left the cave and went down into the valley. There he picked berries, fern roots, and other edible things and brought them back to Fusehime between his teeth and placed them before her. He did the same thing the next day, and the next. After he had been doing this for more than a hundred days, he gradually began to listen to the words of the Lotus Sutra that Fusehime was chanting. Eventually his desire seemed to clear from his mind, and he never again stared at Fusehime in that way. . . .6

  Early each morning Fusehime rubbed her prayer beads between her palms and prayed southward in the direction of the faraway Susaki Shrine and its sacred cave devoted to the mountain god En no Gyōja, in whom she and her mother believed so deeply.7 Sometimes Fusehime would also copy four-verse Buddhist poems and float them out on the river below the cave, praying that their power would protect her parents. During the spring she picked flowers and presented them to the buddhas, and when fall came, she recited various poems while the moon went down in the west, longing with all her heart for Amida Buddha’s Pure Land paradise far away in the western sky. The wild fruits and nuts that fell down into her lap when the autumn winds shook the trees were all the food she needed, and her thin robes and the brushwood ends burning in her fire were enough to keep her warm on cold nights. The slopes of the mountain were so steep she had to lean forward as she climbed, but she did not mind the slopes or resent eating mountain ferns—hadn’t righteous exiles in ancient China eaten them? The plum blossoms announced spring outside her rough cave window much later here than they had while she was growing up, but that did not bother her. At least, she thought, she did not have to study a whole new language the way the sad court lady Wang Zhaojun did after she was sent off by a Han emperor to marry a nomad chieftain.

  Fusehime was not yet twenty years old, and she had a natural, jewel-like beauty. She was as voluptuous as the shaman woman of Mount Wu, who would turn into dawn clouds after a dreamlike night of love with a human lover, and she had the radiance of the poet Ono no Komachi, who compared herself in one of her poems to cherry blossoms. Fusehime still had the refined charm she had acquired growing up in her parent’s castle, and even now, after living so long in the mountains and wearing torn, dirty clothes, her skin was whiter than the patches of snow remaining on the slopes. She had no comb for her lustrous black hair, but it was more fragrant than the spring flowers. Her narrow waist had grown as slim as a bending willow, and her long, slender fingers were becoming as thin as young bamboo.

  A worthy daughter of the governor of Awa, Fusehime was as dedicated to Buddhist meditation as Chūjōhime, a young woman of centuries before who likewise lived alone, far from her noble father and dead mother, and wove lotus fibers into a great mandala of the Pure Land paradise. Fusehime also knew how to write even the most sinuous calligraphy and read difficult books. She had received an extensive education in the classics from her father, and she had a natural intelligence and ability to see the truth. From her mother she had learned not only sewing but music, and she played pieces of exceeding beauty. Yet for some reason, the god of marriage must have disliked this talented young woman, since she was forced to marry a dog and live a wretched life. My brush refuses to describe it further, and my heart aches. You must imagine her exact circumstances for yourself.

  The year ended, and then grass appeared again along the river, and the trees in the valley were once more covered with green leaves. Fusehime would leave her cave to get fresh water for her inkstone, and one day, as she scooped pure river water with her hands, she noticed her reflection in a moving pool beside her. The body she saw on the water was human, but her head was definitely a dog’s. Screaming, she ran back from the river. Then she returned and looked at her reflection once more. This time she saw her own image. She concluded that what she’d seen was only an illusion clouding her mind. She’d been shocked about nothing at all! Then she began to chant the name of Amida and other buddhas and spent the rest of the day copying out the Lotus Sutra. But she felt a strange pain in her lower chest. The next day she still didn’t feel normal, and after that she found that she was no longer menstruating.

  As days and then months went by, Fusehime’s belly began to swell until she was quite uncomfortable. She guessed this might be the sickness that people called “dropsy,” and she hoped she would die quickly. But she didn’t, and spring turned into summer, followed by an even more bitter autumn. When she counted, she realized it was the same month in which she had left her parents behind in Takita Castle and come all the way here. A year ago already! Her pain made her imagine the pain her mother must have felt when she lost her daughter to a dog. How Mother wept when she saw me off, Fusehime remembered, and how I wept, too, as I said good-bye to her. All I could see then was her dear face, and even now I see it before me always. I can’t forget it, no matter how hard I try. And Mother must always see my face before her, too. . . .

  The ailing Fusehime and Yatsufusa in their mountain abode. In contrast to her days at the castle, Fusehime wears a simple white robe tied in front with a sash, her long hair dangling wildly. On her writing table are implements for copying the Lotus Sutra: her writing box, an inkstone, a brush, and a handscroll. In the right frame, a hint of future events, Kanamari shoots Yatsufusa and, by mistake, Fusehime. From the 1819 edition.

  Fusehime hears a flute and then encounters a boy on an ox who claims that he is collecting medicinal herbs but who later turns out to be a manifestation of the mountain god En no Gyōja. Mysteriously, the boy tells Fusehime about her mother’s deep concern for her. When Fusehime asks the boy about her own ailment, the boy reveals that she has become pregnant by Yatsufusa through “mutual interfeeling between similars” because she sympathized so deeply with the dog and regarded him as her partner in their joint search for enligh
tenment. The spirit of Tamazusa, who had been executed with such terrible resentment against Fusehime’s father Yoshizane, has become the dog Yatsufusa and has punished both the father and the daughter. But Yatsufusa did not try to rape Fusehime, and through the efficacy of the Lotus Sutra, which Fusehime has devoutly recited, they both have freed themselves from Tamazusa’s resentful spirit and achieved spiritual awakening. As a reward, Fusehime will bear eight children, although they all will be “empty” or virtual souls rather than physical bodies. Formless, the souls will then have to be born again to physical mothers in order to acquire bodies. The number eight is linked to Yatsufusa’s eight spots and to the eight volumes of the Lotus Sutra. The eight children, born to various mothers, will have good karma and, as a result of Fusehime’s meditations, grow up to be the eight heroes who will come together and reestablish the Satomi as a great clan. Before leaving, the boy tells Fusehime that she will go into labor in her sixth month, that is, within less than a month.

  Fusehime’s Decision

  CHAPTER 13

  After hearing many surprising things from the mysterious boy, Fusehime realized for the first time how little she had known about herself. It was as if she were opening her eyes after a long sleep. But the boy was now nowhere in sight. Perhaps the boy and the conversation were just a dream. The explanations she had heard were very strange, and she wasn’t completely convinced they were true. She sobbed long and hard, beset by fears that the worst would happen.

  But Fusehime’s mind was exceedingly strong, and recently she had become quite manly, so she managed to calm her violent feelings. She brushed her hair away from her face, wiped her eyes, and tried to analyze the situation. “What a horrible thought,” she said, thinking out loud as if someone could hear her. “Some terrible deed in one of my former lives must have caught up with me. And I can’t even know what it was! How tenacious that woman Tamazusa is, holding such a deep grudge against Father that she’s willing to do even this to me. So be it. The boy said it was a curse that should have fallen on Mother. Well then, I’ll gladly take it on myself instead. For Mother, I’d gladly sink to the bottom of hell in my next life, and in my life after that, too! But there’s one thing that makes me feel very ashamed and sad. I haven’t had a single lustful thought, and yet I have no way to explain to my parents and other people why I have a baby animal inside me—how I somehow got pregnant from the spirit of an animal!

  “Since the first day I came here, I’ve done nothing but think of the various buddhas with all my heart and mind and read the Lotus Sutra. When I walk through these wild trees, for me they are the Crane Grove, where the Buddha entered nirvana. And the mountain I see above me is Eagle Peak, where the Buddha preached. I’ve done nothing else at all. And yet no buddha is willing to save me, and no god will help me. What if I really am pregnant? I’ve never slept with Yatsufusa, but still, I have no way to prove it. I’ll be humiliated, and my parents will, too. Their names will never be redeemed, and I’ll be known forever as an animal’s wife. I’ll have to live with this shame for the rest of my life, and after that, my soul will turn into pure resentment and never gain enlightenment. Could there be anything more terrible than this?

  “I didn’t have the slightest idea anything like this was going to happen. Why couldn’t I just have let my father kill that dog when he wanted to? I could have died together with Yatsufusa in the castle. But it’s too late now. Perhaps it was karma from a past life that kept me from dying. Or it could have been a karmic sign that was supposed to teach me something. But there’s nothing this awful in all the parables and allegories in the Buddhist books. It’s simply too terrible to be karma. Even supposing I had the babies and they made my parents and brother happy and helped the Satomi clan prosper, it would still be an unspeakable shame. How could anything this bad possibly happen?” Fusehime was very intelligent, and the more she tried to analyze what she’d heard from the boy, the more distressed she became. Finally, unable to endure it any more, she collapsed on the ground, weeping amid the long, thin stems of tufted wild grass that swayed in the wind.

  Although the mysterious boy reveals to Fusehime the principle of karmic causality and the cause for her pregnancy, Fusehime decides not to have the babies and to kill herself, hoping that her soul will go to the Pure Land. She also invites Yatsufusa to join in committing religious suicide in hopes that his soul will also be purified. In this way, she hopes that Yatsufusa, who has been possessed by Tamazusa’s resentful spirit, will be freed from Tamazusa’s influence. Finally, Yatsufusa is freed from that attachment.

  Kanamari, a retainer of Fusehime’s father (whom her father hopes will marry Fusehime), has a vision and discovers Fusehime’s cave just as she and Yatsufusa are preparing to enter the river. Kanamari shoots Yatsufusa, but one bullet also strikes Fusehime and kills her as well. Horrified, Kanamari tries to commit suicide but is stopped by Fusehime’s father, who also arrives, having been sent by Fusehime’s mother, who also had a vision. Kanamari sees that Fusehime has died of only a light wound, and he takes the prayer beads, places them on her forehead, and hangs them around her neck. Mysteriously, the words in the beads once more show the eight Confucian virtues. As Kanamari prays to the mountain god En no Gyōja, Fusehime comes back to life. When she sees what has happened, however, she weeps and admonishes her father.

  Fusehime repeatedly wiped away the tears in her eyes. “Father,” she said, “if my body were the way it used to be, how could I possibly oppose what you have come all the way here to ask? But some terrible karma is following me from a previous life, and I was shot down by a hunter like a wild animal. For most people, that would have been enough atonement. But apparently not for me. My karma is so bad I’ve been forced to come back to life again. How could I possibly abandon all shame and appear in this horrible shape in front of my parents and those in the place where I was born? The proverb says parents love a disabled child many times more than their other children, just as parents of a bird care for a chick with only one wing that can’t fly from its nest. I wonder, though, if it’s really true.

  “Actually, Father, I’m sure that if I went home, you and Mother would care for me like parent cranes covering their young with their wings, or pheasants searching for their young in a burning field and leading them to safety. Yes, I suppose I am like a young pheasant, crying alone without a husband and separated from its parents. The world has brought me nothing but pain and constant tears, and today I decided to leave it completely behind. I even wrote out a will. You’ve seen it. What do you think of what I’ve written? Yatsufusa wasn’t just a lustful animal. He escaped burning desires and attachments, and we set out together on a journey toward enlightenment. He protected me, and my body is still pure. He never touched me, much less forced himself on me. Still, my body does seem to be pregnant, although nothing at all happened to make it that way. I can’t tell whether or not I’m really going to have children.

  “Father, you may have hopes for me to marry that young man over there. That would be a mistake. And it would make things worse to start talking about your private wishes at the moment when I am about to die. So please, don’t mention the subject. Neither Kanamari nor I am married, but if you had such a match in mind, then it would have been the height of infidelity for me to have abandoned my fiancé and gone off with the dog.

  “There was no way for me to know some man had been chosen to be my husband. If I knew nothing about it and Kanamari also knew nothing about it and it’s only in your mind, Father, then it all has no meaning, like the sword that was delivered too late to a man and had to be placed in front of his grave. And not only that. If Yatsufusa were my husband, then Kanamari would be my worst enemy, because he killed Yatsufusa. But the fact is, Yatsufusa isn’t my husband, and neither is Kanamari. I was alone when I came into this world, and now I set out for the other world alone. Please don’t try to stop me. If love goes too far, it turns into cruelty.

  “I owe you a debt of gratitude too great ever to repay, Father. So
when I refuse your offer to take me back into your house, I realize it is the height of disobedience and shows a lack of filial respect. I also realize that we will never meet again. But remember, there is a reason I can’t return with you. I’m entangled in some terrible, uncontrollable karma, and it’s blocking my way to buddhahood. So please give up your hopes for me and reconcile yourself to what I am going to do. And please explain things to Mother. Convey to her how deep my apologies are, and tell her that I am praying that she may live for many more years.

  “There’s no use hiding my body after I die. You’ve already seen me in this terrible condition. They say that when the souls of pregnant women reach the other world, they sink into a lake in hell that’s filled with blood. It wouldn’t be something I could escape or even dislike. It would simply be due to my karma. But these children that are supposed to be growing inside me without any father, they’re too strange for me to believe. If I don’t cut myself open and see what they are, I’ll always suspect myself. And other people will always suspect me, too. Watch closely!”

  Several episodes are pictured here. Kanamari Daisuke, who earlier shot Yatsufusa and Fusehime, kneels, chanting the name of En no Gyōja in hopes of reviving Fusehime. Unsheathing his long sword, Satomi Yoshizane, Fusehime’s father, and his retainer Horiuchi Sadayuki (far right) look up at the eight dog-spirit shapes in the air. Fusehime, next to Yatsufusa’s body, takes the short sword out of her belly with blood-smeared hands. The elderly lady-in-waiting with her eyes closed and hands clasped together and the young lady-in-waiting at Fusehime’s side are her guardians. Text: “Cutting herself open, Fusehime releases the eight dog children.”