Japanese Tales

by Royall Tyler

  There was an uproar. “Oh! My lady! How awful! Oh please, Your Grace, please put her back! You can go right up to her curtains, of course you can!”

  Sōō would not budge. “Why, I wouldn’t think of it!” he said. “A poor beggar like me wouldn’t dare approach Her Majesty!” Furious at having been denied direct access to the empress in the first place, he had no intention of moving. On the contrary, right out there on the veranda he raised Her Majesty four or five feet into the air and gave her a good whack. Panic-stricken, her attendants hustled the curtains over to hide her, while at the same time chasing all the bystanders they could get at — passing servants, ladies-in-waiting, gentlemen of the court — out of sight. Alas, the damage was already done. Everyone had seen the empress as plain as plain could be.

  Sōō gave her a few more whacks and scooted her back to where she had started out from, so decorously concealed. Then he left. “Oh, do wait a moment!” the empress’s attendants cried out, but he ignored them. “I’ve been standing around too long as it is,” he grumbled, “and my back hurts.”

  The empress found that the evil spirit was now gone and that she felt perfectly well. Sōō had been so impressive that he soon got an imperial proclamation appointing him a bishop. “Now what’s a beggar like me to do with a fancy title like that?” he muttered, and sent the messenger packing.

  After that, Sōō was constantly being called to heal people in Kyoto, but he refused to go. He would always complain that in the Capital you don’t get any respect.

  74.

  THE INVISIBLE MAN

  There once lived in the Capital, no one remembers just when, a humble man who was devoted to Rokkakudō, a holy temple dedicated to Kannon. He often went there on pilgrimage.

  On the last night of the year he went out alone on a visit and came home late. Just as he was crossing the Horikawa Bridge westward, along First Avenue, he saw a troupe of people approaching with torches. No doubt a great lord was on his way somewhere. The man quickly hid under the bridge and sneaked a look as the crowd passed overhead. They were not humans at all but frightful demons! Some had a single eye, some had horns, some had lots of arms, and some hopped along on only one leg.

  The man forgot whether he was alive or dead and stood rooted, witless, to the spot. Meanwhile the demons passed by — all but one who was trailing behind and who muttered, “There’s a man around here!” Another demon said that he didn’t see any man. “Get him!” shouted a third, and the man thought he was lost.

  One demon charged, caught him, and dragged him up. The others agreed that he had done nothing much wrong and decided to let him go, but first four or five of the demons spat in his face. Then they went their way.

  The man was happy just not to have been killed. His head ached now and he felt rather strange, but he was so eager to get home and tell his wife all about it that he went on as fast as he could. When he entered his house, his family never said a word to him, though they looked straight at him, and they did not answer when he spoke to them. Even when he went right up to them they seemed not to know anyone was there. At last he understood. The demons’ spit had made him invisible.

  What a disaster! He could see and hear as well as ever, but no one could see or hear him. He even tried eating some of the food his family had left out, but no one noticed. They, for their part, were sure by the time dawn came that he had been murdered the previous night.

  Several days later there was still no improvement. The man stayed at Rokkakudō and begged Kannon for help. “Year after year I’ve visited you and put my trust in you,” he prayed. “Now, please, grant me this boon: make me visible as I used to be!” He fed himself from the meals of the others on retreat there and from the offerings they made to Kannon, yet even someone right next to him would never realize he was doing so.

  After two retreat periods (seven days each), he dreamed one night, toward dawn, that a holy monk stood beside him. “Leave here early in the morning and do as the first person you meet tells you,” the monk ordered. Then the man woke up.

  He left at dawn and met at the gate a weird oxherd with a huge ox. “Hey, you!” the oxherd called. “Come with me!” The man was relieved to gather that he was visible again and gladly followed the oxherd as the dream had instructed him to do. After half a mile or so, they came to an imposing gate. It was closed, but the oxherd tethered his ox and started through the crack between the leaves of the gate — a crack much too small for anyone to get through. “Come on!” he ordered. “You too!”

  “How am I supposed to get through a crack like that?” the man protested.

  “Just do it!” The oxherd took his hand and pulled him through. They were on the grounds of a big, prosperous mansion.

  They walked into the house unchallenged. In an inner room a girl was lying ill, with women sitting at the head and foot of her bed watching over her. The oxherd gave the man a small mallet, sat him down by the girl, and had him hammer her on the head and hips. As he did so, the girl half sat up in agony. Her parents, who were there too, told each other the end was near and wept. Someone was chanting a sutra.

  A servant went to call a famous healer who shortly arrived, sat down beside the girl, and intoned the Heart Sutra. At the sound of his voice, the hair rose on the man’s head and he shivered with awe. The oxherd, meanwhile, escaped as fast as he could and disappeared.

  Next, the healer chanted Fudō’s Fire Darani. The man screamed and his clothes burst into flames. Suddenly he was plainly visible again for the whole household to see: a miserable wretch seated right beside the patient. He was quickly seized, hustled outside, and questioned; he told his story as best he could. The household had difficulty believing him. On the other hand, they were very happy to find that the girl was now perfectly well.

  The healer assured them that the man was not to blame, and that on the contrary he had just been mercifully blessed by the Kannon of Rokkakudō. They were to let him go. So they drove the man from their door, and he returned home to tell his family the whole adventure. Though disturbed by it, his wife was awfully glad to have him back.

  The oxherd had been the follower of some god, and it was he who had been persuaded somehow to possess the girl and torture her. Both she and the man enjoyed perfect health after that. How powerful the Fire Darani is!

  75.

  DYEING CASTLE

  Long ago the great master Ennin went to study the Buddha’s Teaching in China, so as to pass it on to our own land. In 845 he encountered Emperor Wu-tsung’s terrible persecution of Buddhism. Temples were being razed, and monks and nuns were being seized and killed or forced back into lay life.

  Ennin was almost caught, too, when he fled into a hall of the temple where he was staying. Soldiers went in after him. Desperate, he hid among the sacred images, and the soldiers were surprised to find a new Fudō among the buddhas on the altar. They were also suspicious, however, and when they lifted the Fudō down it turned back into Ennin. They reported this alarming transformation to the emperor who decided that being a foreign monk, Ennin should simply be expelled from China.

  Greatly relieved, Ennin fled for the border. Beyond the distant mountains he came to an isolated compound with a high wall around it, pierced by a single gate. It was good to see a human dwelling. He learned from the gatekeeper that the establishment belonged to a certain rich man. The gatekeeper asked Ennin who he was.

  “I’m a Japanese monk and I came to China to study the Buddha’s Teaching,” Ennin replied. “But now I’m trying to escape this terrible persecution.”

  The man remarked that hardly anyone ever came there. “Why not stay awhile?” he suggested. “When things have quieted down you can go back to studying.”

  Ennin accepted gladly. The gatekeeper locked the gate behind him and led him into a bustling compound filled with buildings. He was given a room off to one side.

  Next, he went looking for a good place to practice his devotions. He found no sign of Buddhism or of monks, but in the back, toward th
e mountains, he heard pitiful human groans coming from a building. Peering anxiously through a crack in the fence round the place, he saw people tied up and hung in mid-air, with jars below them to catch their dripping blood. Horrified, he called to ask them why they were being tortured, but got no reply. Then he tried another spot and heard an answering groan.

  Beyond the fence people were lying on the ground, deathly pale and emaciated. Ennin beckoned to one and asked again what had brought them to this pass. The victim slipped his wasted arm through the fence and with a bit of wood traced the following message on the ground.

  “This is Dyeing Castle,” the victim wrote. “People who come here are first given a drug which deprives them of speech, then fed another which fattens them. After that they are hung up and their skin slit all over so that their blood drips out. The blood is used to dye tie-dyed stuffs, which are sold. All of us are being tortured this way because we did not know about the trap. You will find in your food dark grains like sesame seeds. These are the drug that robs you of speech. If they try to feed them to you, only pretend to eat them. Get rid of them, and groan if anyone talks to you. Then escape as fast as you can, but not through the gate because it is locked and impassable.”

  Ennin returned to his room, and a meal was soon brought him. In the food there were black grains, which he slipped into the fold of his robe and later threw away. When a servant spoke to him, he only groaned in reply. The servant was deceived and gave Ennin next the drug to fatten him. Ennin pretended to eat this too, but did not. When he was alone again, he turned to the northeast and prayed with desperate intensity to all the good powers of Hiei, his home mountain and monastery in Japan.

  Suddenly a large black dog appeared, caught Ennin’s sleeve in his jaws, and tugged. Ennin thought it best to follow. The dog led him to where a brook entered the compound, a place he would never have found on his own. Once he was outside, the dog vanished.

  He ran wherever his legs would carry him till he came to a village beyond the mountains and described to a curious villager who he was and where he had been. “How awful!” exclaimed the villager. “That’s Dyeing Castle! No one who goes in there ever returns. Only the Buddha’s aid could possibly have gotten you out! You must be a saint!” He immediately prostrated himself before Ennin.

  At last Ennin made his way secretly back to the Capital, and in 846 Emperor Wu-tsung died. The next emperor halted the persecution, so that Ennin was able to complete his stay in China profitably and return to Japan with a rich store of holy wisdom.

  76.

  TAKEN IN

  A newly appointed deputy viceroy of Kyushu had many children, but the last of them was his favorite: a bright and handsome son now twenty years old. Though not from a warlike family, the young man was remarkably strong and brave, and his parents were so fond of him that they took him down to Kyushu with them. Meanwhile the deputy viceroy’s assistant, the governor of Chikuzen, had a lovely teenage daughter whom he and his wife loved so much that they had taken her down to Kyushu, too.

  The deputy viceroy was so eager for the two to marry that his assistant could hardly refuse, and on an auspicious day the pair were happily united. But the groom had always aspired to a government career, and he now planned to go up to the Capital. Parting from his wife was out of the question, so he decided to take her with him — by land, since the sea route seemed a bit risky. He set off with a party of twenty picked retainers, and with a train of pack horses and of servants on foot.

  They were making good time when they reached Inamino in Harima province, late on a January afternoon. A stiff wind was blowing, mixed with snow. From the mountains to the north a monk rode toward them, an imposing fellow in a red robe, violet trousers, and straw boots, carrying a lacquered whip. The saddle on his spirited horse was inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

  He dismounted and bowed respectfully to the young man. “I have long served His Excellency the governor of Chikuzen,” he said. “I happened to hear, sir, that you were on your way to the Capital, and since I live in the mountains north of here I came to offer my hospitality, if you do not mind roughing it a bit.” He was ever so polite.

  The young man’s retainers all dismounted in turn while the young man reined in his horse. “It’s very kind of you,” he replied, “but I want to get to Kyoto as fast as I can. I may return to Kyushu next year, though, and I’ll be happy to visit you then.”

  But the monk would not take no for an answer. The sun had almost sunk behind the mountains by now, and the retainers were so obviously eager to accept that at last the young man yielded. The monk led the way with a satisfied air, assuring his guests that they had not far to go.

  Two or three miles brought them to a compound entirely surrounded by a high wall. The monk took the young couple straight in to what appeared to be living quarters on the south side of the compound, and had refreshments served them while the horses were foddered. The servants and retainers, meanwhile, were given lodgings a good way off.

  After a lively and luxurious feast the couple, alone but for a maid or two, loosened their clothes and lay down. The maids had enjoyed themselves freely and were now asleep, but the couple were wide awake. Somehow ill at ease, they had hardly eaten or drunk. As they chatted they assured each other tenderly of their love and wondered, in a strangely gloomy mood, what their journey would yet bring them. Slowly the hours passed.

  In the small hours they heard with misgiving footsteps approaching from within the house. Suddenly the door by the head of their bed slid open. The young man jumped up but was seized by the hair and dragged away. Strong though he was, it had all happened too fast. He had not even been able to pick up the sword he kept by his pillow.

  The assailant knocked a shutter open and hauled him out of the room. “Kaneomaru!” he called. “Are you ready? See that you take care of the usual!”

  “Right!” answered a nasty voice. Hands seized the young man’s collar and hustled him off.

  There was a fenced area in one corner of the compound, and the gate in the fence opened onto a pit thirty feet deep with hundreds of sharpened bamboo stakes planted at the bottom. Year after year travelers like the young man, on their way back and forth to the Capital, were lured in, given wine that left them dead-drunk, then thrown into the pit while their similarly drunk retainers were stripped of everything they owned. Some retainers were killed, while others, the more promising ones, were pressed into service. This was the trap the young man and his party had fallen into.

  Kaneomaru dragged the young man to the fence, opened the gate, and propelled him through it, but the young man clung to a gatepost and could not be budged further. Kaneomaru got on the pit side of him and pulled. There was a slight incline down from the gate. The young man shifted his weight and gave a powerful shove which sent Kaneomaru hurtling into the pit. Then he closed the gate and stole under the veranda of the house.

  At last he was able to think. He could try to arouse his retainers, but they were unconscious with drink, and besides, there was a moat between him and them and the bridge was drawn. Instead, he crept under the floor of the room where he had just been. He heard the monk come in to his wife.

  “No doubt you’ll be shocked to hear me confess it,” said the monk, “but in the daylight, when the wind blew your veil aside, I caught a glimpse of your face and now I can think only of you. Forgive me.” He slid into bed beside her.

  “Before I started up to the Capital, I made a vow to abstain for one hundred days,” the wife replied. “There are just three days left. When those three days are over, I’ll do anything you say.”

  “What I have in mind will bring you far more merit than that!”

  “The man who was everything to me has vanished before my eyes, and I can’t prevent you doing whatever you want with me. I can’t refuse you in the end, you know that. You’ve no need to be so impatient.” She was holding him off.

  Conceding she had a point, the monk went away.

  “That husband of mine won’t
die a shameful death!” the woman murmured to herself, and the young man under the floor, raging, heard her. He pushed a sliver of wood up through a crack between the floorboards, right in front of her, and when she saw it she knew she had been right. She waggled the sliver and he knew she had understood.

  The monk kept coming back to try again, but she always managed to put him off. When he was finally gone, the wife silently opened a shutter and her husband came out from under the floor into the room. Both burst into tears and promised each other that if they were to die they should die together. The young man asked what had happened to his sword. “I hid it under the matting when you were dragged away,” she answered, and brought it out. It was a ray of hope at last.

  Sword in hand, the young man stealthily made his way toward his retainers. Seven or eight carving blocks stood beside a long fire pit and the monk’s men were sprawled nearby amid the scattered remains of their dinner, with their bows, quivers, armor, daggers, and swords beside them. The monk himself was asleep on his armrest. A pair of tables before him bore silver vessels full of the leavings from his meal.

  “Help me now, O Kannon of Hasedera!” the young man prayed. “Let me see my parents again!” Since the monk was so unexpectedly sleeping, he decided to attack straight off, cut off the monk’s head, and die, for he saw no chance of escape. At the first blow the monk cried out and raised his arms in fright, but the next blow killed him.

  The monk’s men were certainly many, but Kannon must really have protected the young man because when they saw their leader dead they thought they had been invaded by a large force. Besides, they themselves had all been caught and forced into service by the man, and they had no wish to fight for him. Now he was dead, it did not occur to them to resist. Instead, they all blurted at once, “I didn’t do anything wrong! I used to serve Lord So-and-So before I fell into this trap!” The young man put on a good show of having ample reinforcements behind him, herded them all off, and locked them up.