How a Poor Man Left His Wife and She Became the Wife of the Governor of Settsu (30:5)
Long ago in the capital, there was a young man of rather humble birth who was extremely poor. He had no friends, no father or mother or kinfolk, and no place to live. So he was obliged to live with people of another household and work for them. Because the people he worked for treated him so shabbily, he tried to find a place where he would get better treatment. But wherever he went, it was just the same. Being unfit for service in a household of the aristocracy, however, he could not hope for any improvement.
He had a wife—young, attractive in form and bearing, and refined in nature—who remained by his side, poor as he was. Troubled by his many worries, he spoke to her in this fashion: “As long as we’re in this world, I’d thought that we would stay together. But we seem to grow poorer with each passing day. Since things go so badly for us together, perhaps we should try going our separate ways. What do you think?”
“I cannot see things that way,” his wife replied. “Our troubles are due simply to karma from a past existence. If we are to face death by starvation, I would hope that we might face it together. But if you believe that the situation is hopeless and that it is not good for us to remain together, then perhaps we should try parting.”
This was in fact what the husband wanted, and so, weeping and vowing to be true to each other, they parted.
Later the wife, who was still young and attractive in form and bearing, found employment in the household of——of——.57 She was a woman highly refined in nature, and her employer, feeling sorry for her, treated her with kindness. When his own wife died, he treated her with increasing familiarity, addressing her in intimate terms. She slept by his side, and there was nothing strained or hateful in their relations. As time passed, eventually he came to regard this woman as in all respects his wife, putting her in complete charge of all his household affairs.
Around this time, the gentleman was appointed governor of Settsu Province.58 The woman became more and more refined in bearing with the passing of the years. But her husband of former times, whose idea it had been that they should try living apart, thereafter seemed only to fall deeper and deeper into poverty. In time, he found that he could no longer remain in the capital. He made his way aimlessly to the area of Settsu, where the only employment he could find was that of field hand. He did the meanest sort of work, tilling the fields or cutting timber, but even such tasks he could not seem to get the hang of. His employer, regarding him as next to useless, sent him to the Bay of Naniwa to cut reeds.59
And as he made his way there to cut reeds, the governor of Settsu, along with his wife, left the capital and journeyed to Settsu. When they reached the area of Naniwa, they halted their carriage in order to enjoy the view. Accompanied by a large number of attendants and lackeys, they ate, drank wine, and amused themselves at leisure. The governor’s lady, along with her women attendants, looked out from their carriage, viewing the delights and peculiarities of the scene. There were many low-class laborers cutting reeds, but among them was one who, though no more than a hired hand, seemed to have a refined air.
The governor’s lady looked at him long and carefully. “This man looks strangely like my husband of former times,” she thought. Could she be mistaken? she wondered, but looking even more closely, she saw that it was indeed he. How wretched he seemed, standing there cutting reeds. “As ever, a pitiful sight!” she thought. “Has karma from a past existence brought him to this?” Her tears poured down, but, pretending that nothing was amiss, she summoned a man and said, “Among those hired laborers cutting reeds, call that fellow over here!”
The man hurried off with this message. “You there, the people in that fine carriage want you!” The reed cutter, thinking this all but impossible, stood in hesitation. But the messenger, shouting in a loud and threatening voice, said, “Hurry up now!” The man stopped cutting reeds, fastened his sickle at his waist, and went over to the carriage.
When the governor’s lady saw him up close, she knew that it was him. He was smeared black with dirt and dressed in a sleeveless hemp smock that reached to his knees. He wore a battered cap; his face, hands, and feet were plastered in dirt; and he was filthy all over. Leeches had fastened themselves to the backs of his knees and shins, making bloody sores. The governor’s lady, seeing him in this condition, was filled with pity. She had one of her people take him food and wine to drink, and observing his expression as he faced her carriage and ate and drank with gusto, she was moved to even greater pity.
To one of the women in her carriage she said, “Among those hired laborers cutting reeds, this man for some reason seems more refined. I feel very sorry for him.” Taking a robe from among the things in the carriage, she said to the woman, “Here—give this to that man.” And as she did so, she wrote the following words on a scrap of paper and handed it over with the robe:
Ashikaraji No bad will come of it—
to omohite koso so we thought
wa wakareshika and thus we parted.
nado ka Naniwa no Why of all things
ura ni shimo sumu do you live in this Bay of Naniwa?
Presented with the robe, the man thought it very strange. Wondering why this had happened, he saw that there was something written on the slip of paper. Looking at it, he read what was written there. “How strange!” he thought. “This must have been written by the woman who was once my wife!” Thinking that his deeds in a past life must have brought this sorrow and shame on him, he said, “Would someone please bring me an inkstone?”60 And when the stone was brought, he wrote these words:
Kimi nakute Without you
ashikarikeri to nothing good came my way.
omou ni wa Thinking of it,
itodo Naniwa no the life I lead in the Bay of Naniwa
ura zo sumiuki is all the more dismal!61
When the governor’s lady read this, she felt even sorrier for him. As for the man, he did not go back to cutting reeds but instead ran away and hid.
Afterward, the governor’s lady never told anyone about this affair. For all we know, it was all due to karma from a past existence. It is senseless, therefore, to resent one’s lot in life.
The governor’s lady, when she grew old, must have told the story to others, and so it has been handed down and has reached those of us of a later age.
1.The sennin were ascetics who lived in the mountains, practicing religious austerities and hoping to attain immortal life. According to the Indian legend from which this story is taken, a certain mountain ascetic, observing two deer copulating, became sexually excited and spilled his semen. The doe then lapped up the semen, became pregnant, and in time gave birth to the One-Horned Ascetic. He had the feet of a deer and a horn on his forehead.
2.Kekara is probably a corruption of the word Gandhara, a region in modern Pakistan.
3.The holy man has revealed himself as subject to sensual desires, and hence his magical powers have deserted him.
4.Walking sticks topped with pewter rings were standard accoutrements of Buddhist monks who traveled in the mountains. The clatter of the rings was intended to scare away noxious creatures in the path of the walker.
5.A major figure in the ancient Indian pantheon, Indra is the god of thunder and rain. He was later incorporated into Buddhism as a guardian deity.
6.Kashyapa, Ānanda, and Rāhula were among the ten major disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha. Ānanda was a cousin of the Buddha, and Rāhula was the Buddha’s son. The identity of the nun Zengo is unknown. There is a blank in the text where one would expect to learn the identity of the eagle, presumably because the writer intended at some point to gather further information or deliberately left a blank.
7.Ānanda was a cousin of Shakyamuni Buddha and an important disciple. Sundarī was the woman who slandered Shakyamuni and caused the followers to doubt his word. Devadatta was a close disciple of Shakyamuni who later turned against him.
8.For an analysis of the tale, see Mic
helle Osterfeld Li, Ambiguous Bodies: Reading the Grotesque in Japanese Setsuwa Tales (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009), 57–65.
9.Although there is a blank in the text rather than a name, the story of Moye and his sword or swords in Chinese sources traditionally has been associated with King Helu (r. 514–496 B.C.E.) of the state of Wu.
10.The land of the Hu refers to the area north of China occupied by the Xiongnu, a non-Chinese nomadic people who at times posed a severe military threat to China. The story refers to events in 33 B.C.E., when the leader of the Xiongnu and his entourage paid a visit to the Han court at Chang’an.
11.Dōjō-ji is an ancient Buddhist temple on the seacoast in Kii Province, present-day Wakayama Prefecture. The story relates the legend for which the temple has long been famous.
12.The Three Treasures of Buddhism are the Buddha, the doctrine, and the monastic order or, in more general terms, the community of believers.
13.The Kumano shrines are three old and important Shinto shrines in the mountains of Kii Province. They were also a center of Buddhist devotion.
14.The monk is referring to the Shinto and Buddhist deities of the Kumano shrines.
15.Offerings of lamps and paper strips are made at Shinto shrines.
16.“The Life Span of the Thus Come One” is chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra and the core of its teachings, in which the Buddha reveals that he attained enlightenment in the far distant past and remains constantly in the world to relieve suffering and bring enlightenment.
17.The Trayastrimsha Heaven is the second of the six heavens in the world of desire, where beings have an extremely long life span. The Tushita Heaven is the fourth of the six heavens, where bodhisattvas are reborn just before they attain buddhahood.
18.The bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara is known in China as Guanyin and in Japan as Kannon, or Perceiver of the World’s Sounds. Originally a male figure, he is often depicted in Chinese and Japanese art as a woman and is popularly referred to in English as the Goddess of Mercy. The eleven-faced Kannon is an image of Kannon with ten smaller heads placed above the main head.
19.The recitation of the words Namu Amida Butsu, or “Hail to Amida Buddha,” is a petition to Amitābha, the central deity in Pure Land Buddhism.
20.An On’yōji (or Onmyōji) master is an expert in Chinese yin-yang divination and the avoidance of evil.
21.Miyoshi no Kiyoyuki (847–918), a Confucian scholar, served in the courts of five Heian-period emperors
22.The ceremony petitions the wind god to spare the region from wind damage.
23.A lay monk (nyūdō), whose head is shaven, observes certain monastic precepts while continuing to live in society rather than in a temple.
24.There is a blank in the text wherever the monk’s name would have appeared. Apparently, the compiler intended to fill in the blanks, but was not able to do so.
25.Mount Hiei, northeast of Kyoto, is the headquarters of the Tendai school and one of the most important centers of Japanese Buddhism. The Konponchūdō and the Hie Shrine, mentioned in the next sentence, are among the main sites of worship on the mountain.
26.The Seventh Month of the lunar calendar corresponds to August or September in the solar calendar.
27.Mount Wutai, a center of Buddhist activity in northeastern Shanxi Province, is noted in particular for the worship of Mañjuśri, the bodhisattva of wisdom.
28.Nengu returned to Japan in 1013. Some texts identify Nengu as a Chinese monk, but, as the text indicates here, he was originally from Japan.
29.The History of the Song (Ch. Song shi, Jp. Sōshi, 1346) records that Jakushō went to China in 1004 and was honored with the name Great Teacher Yuantong or Entsū. Because he could not speak Chinese, he communicated with the emperor “by brush”—that is, in writing. He died in China in 1034.
30.Yōzei (r. 877–884) was deposed at age eighteen because of signs of mental instability.
31.A Sanskrit word meaning “devil,” mara entered Japanese by way of Buddhism and was used as a term for “penis.”
32.A chō, here a unit of length, is about 360 feet.
33.A shaku is a little less than one foot.
34.Historical records confirm Minamoto no Yorinobu in this position in the year 999.
35.Ajari was a high post in the priesthood of the Shingon school, which held power at Mount Mitake.
36.Both Yorinobu (968–1048) and Yoriyoshi (995–1082) were distinguished military figures who played an important role in putting down revolts against the government.
37.Barrier Hill is the site of the barrier gate in Yamashina, east of Kyoto, on the main road leading to eastern Japan. Travelers on the road were stopped at the gate for questioning.
38.There is a lacuna in the original text.
39.The Kamo is the shallow river that marks the eastern boundary of the capital.
40.The ground was wet presumably because of the heavy rain that had fallen.
41.Ōmi Province is roughly equivalent to present-day Shiga Prefecture, in which Lake Biwa is located.
42.Go and suguroku (more commonly, sugoroku) are board games, the latter played with dice. They are often used for gambling.
43.Agi apparently is an old name for the part of the Hino River that runs into the western side of Lake Biwa.
44.Kannon, the bodhisattva known in English as the Goddess of Mercy, has vowed to aid those in trouble.
45.The kanpaku (regent) in the government at the time was Fujiwara no Yoritori, who served as kanpaku from 1020 to 1067.
46.The bridge is at Ōtsu over the Seta River, which runs out of the southern end of Lake Biwa.
47.Tengu are goblins with wings and long noses who live in the mountains, particularly the mountains north of Kyoto.
48.The type of mushroom now known as maitake (dancing mushroom; Grifola frondosa), widely eaten in Japan, has no such intoxicating effect. The mushrooms the nuns ate were presumably of some variety with hallucinatory power.
49.Fujiwara no Nobutada ended his term of office as governor of Shinano in 988, so the incident related here must have taken place then or shortly after.
50.Misaka is a narrow and dangerous pass on the road between Shinano and Mino provinces, or present-day Nagano and Gifu prefectures. In steep places or where it followed the edge of a cliff, the road was paved with logs to provide better footing and to widen the path.
51.The hiratake (oyster mushroom; Pleurotus ostreatus) is an edible mushroom, with a shell-like appearance, that grows on trees in the wild.
52.That is, government officials such as the governor turn every occasion into an opportunity for gain.
53.Rashōmon was the main gate on the southern side of the capital, where Shujaku (Suzaku) Avenue, which ran down the middle of the city, came to an end. From Rashōmon Gate, the avenue led north to the imperial palace.
54.Popular belief of the time held that Rashōmon Gate was inhabited by an oni (ogre).
55.Tanba was the province directly northwest of the capital. Ōeyama here is the hilly region between the western edge of Kyoto and present-day Kameoka.
56.Michinoku Province, in northern Japan, was famous for its swords.
57.There are blanks in the text rather than names.
58.Settsu Province was the area around the present-day city of Osaka.
59.The swampy area on which Osaka was later built, the Bay of Naniwa at this time was a vast plain of reeds. The cut reeds were used to make various household articles.
60.A stone on which dry ink and water are mixed, the inkstone and its writing brush allowed the man to write a reply to his former wife’s poem.
61.The poems contain word plays on ashi (reeds) and ashi (bad, ill-omened).
A COLLECTION OF TALES FROM UJI
UJI SHŪI MONOGATARI
A Collection of Tales from Uji (Uji shūi monogatari, early thirteenth century), whose author and date of composition are uncertain, is the most popular and widely read of the medieval setsuwa collections. The quality of the writing wa
s considered to be unsurpassed among setsuwa collections, and the book was widely printed and read in the Edo period (1600–1867). An aristocrat of the Heian period (794–1185), the Senior Counselor (Dainagon) Minamoto no Takakuni (1004–1077), who lived at the Byōdō-in Buddhist temple at Uji, south of the capital, is thought to have written a work entitled Tales of the Senior Counselor (Uji dainagon monogatari, late eleventh century), which was very popular but was lost. The attempt to reconstruct the lost text in the early thirteenth century probably resulted in the Uji shūi monogatari. The Uji in the title refers to the Byōdō-in, and shūi (collection of remains) probably refers to collecting the remains of the Uji dainagon monogatari.
The Uji shūi monogatari contains 197 stories, of which 80 also appear in Tales of Times Now Past (Konjaku monogatari shū, ca. 1120), and a number are in other setsuwa collections. That so many of these stories appear elsewhere is an indication of how popular they were at the time. Fifty of the stories are not duplicated in other collections, however, including humorous tales with sexual content and folktales such as “How Someone Had a Wen Removed by Demons” (3) and “How a Sparrow Repaid Its Debt of Gratitude” (48).
The stories in the Uji shūi monogatari are not arranged according to subject matter, as they are in the Konjaku monogatari shū, nor does the collection seem to have any particular order or plan, except to include the most interesting stories. The anthology contains many kinds of stories: serious and humorous, Japanese and foreign (India and China), Buddhist (about one-third to one-half), and secular, with many of the most noted being secular. Unlike the Buddhist tales in the Konjaku monogatari shū, the Buddhist-related stories in the Uji shūi monogatari do not appear to have been intended for immediate religious use. Instead, the interest is in looking at individuals and human society with an ironic eye and a love of good storytelling. Whereas in the late Heian and early Kamakura (1183–1333) periods, setsuwa were collected as part of the attempt to preserve artifacts of a court culture that was rapidly disappearing, in Uji shūi monogatari the point of view is not at all fixed, instead exploring different classes and social groups from different angles.
The Demon at Agi Bridge and Other Japanese Tales (Translations from the Asian Classics) Page 11