Japanese Tales

by Royall Tyler

  The man drew his sword and got ready to strike if the demon came in, while the woman cowered beside him.

  “Well, take another good look!” said the demon and went its way.

  The man decided every fiend in the world must have been abroad that night. He never slept under the reviewing stand on First Avenue again.

  171.

  CHERISH-THE-AGED SPRING

  A poor man of Empress Genshō’s reign, in Mino province, gathered wood in the mountains to support his old father. Since his father constantly demanded wine, he often went off with a gourd at his belt to buy him all he wanted.

  One day the man, out in the mountains as usual to cut wood, slipped on a mossy rock and fell flat on his face. Looking up again, he noticed a spring running from the rock. The water was the color of wine. He scooped up some and tasted it: it was wine, and delicious too. After that he came every day for more, much to his father’s delight.

  News of the spring reached the empress, who came to see it herself in the ninth moon of 717. The gods of sky and earth had obviously recognized the man’s perfect devotion to his father and had made the spring for him as a reward. The empress took the hint and appointed him governor of Mino.

  The spring was named Yōrō, or “Cherish-the-Aged” spring, and in its honor the name of the reign-period too was changed to Yōrō.

  172.

  THE BOTTOMLESS SACK

  Ikue no Yotsune, a junior provincial official in Echizen, started out in life so poor that he was almost starving. But when he prayed for relief to the Goddess Kichijōten he ended up rich — in fact, rich far beyond his needs or even his desires.

  Soon after Yotsune turned to Kichijōten for help, he heard that a beautiful woman was at his gate asking for him. He wondered as he went out to her who in the world she could be. She wad beautiful, and she gave him a dish heaped with cooked rice.

  “I gather you’re starving,” she said. “Eat this!”

  Yotsune took the rice gladly. Just a little satisfied him right away, and he hardly even felt hungry again for several days. He put the bowl away and ate the rice as slowly as he could, but when it was all gone at last he remained as destitute as before. Again he prayed to Kichijōten, and the woman returned to his gate. He hurried out to her as fast as he could go.

  She told him she was awfully sorry but this time she could not help him directly. “Take this requisition slip instead,” she said, and handed him a piece of paper.

  Yotsune read: “Rice: three bushels.”

  “But where am I supposed to get this rice?” he asked.

  “Cross the mountains north of here till you reach the highest peak. Climb to the top and call ‘Shuda! Shuda!’ Someone will answer you and come out to give you the rice.”

  Yotsune did as he was told. At the top of the highest mountain he called “Shuda! Shuda!” and a frightful voice answered him. Then something came toward him. It was a demon with a single horn in the middle of its forehead and a single eye, wearing a red loincloth.

  The demon knelt before Yotsune. Though it was a terrifying creature, Yotsune plucked up all his courage and announced that he had a requisition slip. “I’m supposed to get some rice,” he explained.

  “I’m sure you are,” said the demon and looked over the document. “It says three bushels,” he went on, “but one bushel is the quantity I’ve been told to give you.” He put a bushel of rice in a sack and gave it to Yotsune, who took it home.

  When Yotsune helped himself from the sack, the sack filled itself back up again. It never ran out. Soon Yotsune was rich.

  Having heard about Yotsune’s sack of rice, the governor of the province sent Yotsune word that he wanted to buy it immediately. As a resident of the province Yotsune could not refuse. The delighted governor gave him one hundred bushels of rice for it. At its new owner’s home the sack refilled itself as before, and the governor was sure he had acquired a priceless treasure. But when he had taken out a full hundred bushels, the rice gave out and the sack never filled up again. The governor was very angry, but there was nothing he could do about it. In the end he decided he would have to give the sack back to Yotsune.

  At Yotsune’s the sack refilled itself again the way it had always done, no matter how much rice was taken from it. How foolish the governor had been! How could he possibly take almost by force from Yotsune the reward that Yotsune had merited for his devotion to Kichijōten, and then expect to enjoy its bounty himself?

  173.

  THE SOLID GOLD CORPSE

  A humble man of the Capital had lost his parents, and having no lord to look to either, was very poor. But he knew that the Kannon of Hasedera answers people’s prayers, and he could not believe that he alone would be excluded from Kannon’s grace. Despite his difficult circumstances, he set off on foot to Hasedera.

  This was his plea to Kannon. “O Kannon, grant me, in your compassion, a little ease in this life! It is not high position I crave, or boundless wealth. I only beg for a modest income. Surely my karma from past lives has brought this poverty on me. O Kannon, they say your vow to help sentient beings is supreme among the vows of all the buddhas. Help me, oh help me, please!” In this spirit he prayed at the temple for several days but went home in the end disappointed, without even having had a dream.

  Though he went on making the same pilgrimage each month, he still got no dream. “Why do you insist on going there?” his wife complained. “The life we lead is miserable enough! They say a buddha helps only those who somehow have a link with him. You never get the least response, no matter how often you go. Obviously you have no link with this Kannon. You might as well give up!”

  “I expect you’re right,” her husband answered, “but I’ve decided to keep up my monthly pilgrimages for three years. My present life may be a loss, but at least I can pray for salvation in the future.”

  At the very end of the third and last year he went on his final pilgrimage, from which he returned weeping at the thought that his reward in this life, for whatever he might have done in the past, was to be beyond the reach of Kannon’s kindness. By sundown he had reached Ninth Avenue. As he continued on, gloomy and depressed, he met a band of freed convicts, the kind who do the lowest jobs for the Imperial Police. They seized him without warning and informed him, over his protests, that they wanted him for coolie labor. They marched him north toward the center of the city.

  This was a nasty shock. At Uchino, near where he lived, they came across a dead boy. The man was ordered with threats and curses to get rid of the body on the dry riverbed. Exhausted as he was from walking all day, this really was too much. Even on his way back from the last of three years’ worth of pilgrimages, this had to happen. Awful karma was the only possible explanation. His wife had been absolutely right. He and the Kannon of Hasedera had nothing to do with each other. He felt awful. And the corpse was so heavy that he could not get it off the ground, till the freed convicts snarled at him so menacingly that he just managed to pick it up after all. They followed right behind him so that he had no chance to drop it and run.

  The corpse was amazingly heavy. He could not carry it to the riverbed by himself, and that was final. Perhaps he could get it home instead, so that during the night he and his wife could both take it where it had to go. The freed convicts said they had no objection. So, much to his wife’s surprise, he arrived home from Hasedera with a dead body and shed bitter tears as he explained how he had come by it.

  “I told you so,” said his wife. “Well, now we’ll have to do something with it.” Though they tried to lift it, its weight was so extraordinary that no effort of theirs could make it seem manageable. Besides it was, as they now noticed, oddly hard. They poked at it with a stick. The surface was gold, for goodness’ sake! Next they lit a lamp and banged on it with a stone. The inside was gold too. The whole corpse was gold! They were speechless. The Kannon of Hasedera had taken pity on them after all.

  They hid the corpse in their house, and the next day scraped off a little
gold and sold it. At last they began doing well. Soon the young man was wealthy. Since he now had property he got a good post and served the court very capably. How wonderful Kannon’s blessings are!

  After acquiring the golden corpse the man devoted himself to Hasedera more faithfully than ever. He never saw the freed convicts again. Perhaps they had been emanations of Kannon.

  174.

  A FORTUNE FROM A WISP OF STRAW

  A poor young man had no parents, lord, wife, or children and so was completely alone; and this meant he had no support or comfort. So he sought the aid of Kannon and went on a pilgrimage to Hasedera, where he prostrated himself before Kannon’s holy presence. “If my life is to go on this way I’d rather starve to death now, here before you!” he declared. “But if by chance there’s hope for me, I won’t leave till you have told me so in a dream.”

  The monks of the temple wanted to know what he was doing. “You don’t seem to have any food,” they said. “If you go on just lying there you’ll pollute the temple” — for they saw that he might die — “and that would be a disaster. Who’s your spiritual adviser? Where do you eat?”

  “I’ve nothing and no one,” the young man answered. “How do you expect me to have a spiritual adviser? I’ve nowhere to get food from and no one to pity me. I eat what Kannon kindly provides, and for what spiritual advice I get I rely on Kannon too.”

  The monks decided that the young man was a nuisance who might make trouble for the temple. Since he was determined to throw himself entirely on Kannon’s mercy, they thought they had better take turns bringing him food.

  He ate the food but stayed where he was until three seven-day retreats were almost over. Just before the dawn of the twenty-second day he dreamed that someone came from behind Kannon’s curtain. “You have some nerve, you know,” the person said, “appealing to Kannon this way without even considering that your own past karma is what’s made your life so miserable. But your plea is touching, and Kannon has a little remedy for you. Clear out of here immediately. On the way, take whatever your hand closes on and keep it. Now, go!”

  The young man gathered that he had been dismissed. He struggled to his feet, went for a final meal with the monks, and left. On his way out the main gate he tripped and fell flat on his face.

  He picked himself up and examined what he somehow had in his hand. It was a single wisp of straw. This was a bit disappointing, but who was he to question Kannon? He walked on, twirling the straw between his fingers.

  Soon a big horsefly came buzzing round his face. Although he tried shooing it off with a branch, it kept coming back. So he caught it, tied one end of the straw round its middle and the other end to the branch, and went on with the captive fly buzzing before him.

  A carriage full of ladies happened by just then, on the way to the temple. A pretty little boy was peering out the window. “What’s that the man’s got?” cried the boy to the servant riding beside the carriage. “Go and get it and give it to me!”

  The servant approached the fly-tamer. “Give me that thing you’ve got there,” he said. “The young master’s asking for it.”

  “This is a present to me from Kannon,” the young man answered, “but if it strikes your little master’s fancy he’s welcome to it.” He handed the servant the branch.

  The ladies liked the way he had parted with his toy. “Here,” they called to him, “eat these when you feel thirsty!” They wrapped up three big tangerines for him in fine Michinoku paper and had the servant deliver them.

  The wisp of straw was now three big tangerines which the young man carried tied to a branch over his shoulder.

  Next, he met a band of mounted servants looking after an apparently distinguished lady who was on foot, having no doubt made a humble vow to do the pilgrimage that way. At the moment she was exhausted and begging her servants in vain for water. The servants were scurrying around looking, but there was simply no water to be found. “What’s happened to the supplies?” one of them shouted, but the supply horses were still far behind, out of sight. When the lady fainted dead away, the alarmed servants tried everything to revive her.

  The young man came quietly up. “You,” they called, “you must know where there’s water! Is there any drinkable water nearby?”

  He asked what the matter was and the servants explained.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “The water’s a good distance off and it’ll take time to get it here. How about these?” He offered them his three beautifully wrapped tangerines.

  The servants fed them eagerly to their mistress, who eventually opened her eyes and asked what had happened.

  “You were thirsty, madam, and you asked for water. Then you fainted. We looked everywhere but we simply couldn’t find any drinking water. Then this man came along. He understood and gave us three tangerines, which we fed to you.”

  “So I fainted from thirst, did I? I remember asking for water, but after that my mind is a blank. Without these tangerines I might just have died here in the fields. What a kind man! Is he still there?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Tell him to be patient. I’d like to do as much for him as his generosity has done for me, but it’s so hard like this on the road. Do we have any food? Give him something to eat!”

  The servants told the young man to stay put and promised that when the supplies got there he should have a meal.

  Finally the supply horses arrived, and their drivers got roundly scolded for having dropped so far behind. A cloth enclosure was put up and mats were spread. Since the lady badly needed rest, the company decided to stop there awhile, although the place was quite inconvenient. Men were sent to fetch water, food was prepared, and the young man got a very good dinner.

  As he ate he wondered what the tangerines were going to turn into. All this was Kannon’s idea, and he could not imagine that he would come away empty-handed. Sure enough, the servants soon brought out three bolts of fine white cloth.

  “Give him these,” said the lady, and sent him this message: “The joy your tangerines have brought me is more than I can describe, but here on the road I cannot do for you all I would wish. These are only a token of my thanks. I live in the Capital at such-and-such a place. Come there, and when you do you will have your full reward.”

  The young man accepted the gift with pleasure. His wisp of straw was now three bolts of cloth, which he put under his arm as he continued on toward Kyoto.

  At sundown he found lodging at a house by the road, and rose the next morning with the birds to pursue his journey. As the sun began to climb in the sky he saw a man riding a beautiful horse. “What a marvelous animal!” thought the young man. “It must be worth a fortune!”

  Suddenly the horse toppled over, obviously dying. The astonished rider stood vacantly beside it while his retainers rushed to get its saddle off and tried to think of what to do. But alas, the horse was now quite dead, and none of their voluble grief could remedy that.

  Their master mounted a poor substitute which happened to be at hand. “Well,” he said, “there it is. I’m going on.” He left a servant behind with instructions to do something about getting the carcass out of sight.

  The young man thought he knew why the horse had died. His wisp of straw had turned into three tangerines, the tangerines had turned into three bolts of cloth, and now, apparently, the cloth was going to turn into a horse for him.

  He learned from the servant that the horse was from somewhere up north. People had offered huge sums for it but the servant’s master had kept hesitating to part with it. Now it was dead, a total loss. “I thought I might at least take its hide,” the servant went on, “but on the road like this I don’t even know what I’d do with it.”

  “I see,” said the young man. “It was a beautiful horse. What a pity! You certainly couldn’t very well dry its hide while you’re traveling, but I can. Why not let me have it?” He gave him a bolt of cloth and the servant, glad of this windfall, ran off with it without looking back, before t
he hide’s purchaser could change his mind.

  The young man watched him go, then washed his hands, turned toward Hasedera, and prayed for the horse to revive. When it opened its eyes, lifted its head, and tried to get up, he gently helped it to stand. How pleased he was! But some straggler from the former owner’s party might still find him, or the former owner himself might come back, so he led the horse into hiding and waited for it to recover fully. Then he went on to a house, traded another bolt of cloth for a bridle and a cheap saddle, and rode his new mount on toward the Capital.

  Sunset found him near Uji, where he paid for dinner, lodging, and fodder with the last of his bolts of cloth. The next morning he once more rose early and went on his way.

  Near the southern edge of the city he passed a house alive with bustle and excitement. The owner seemed to be setting out on a long journey. The young man had already realized that if he took the horse right into town someone might recognize it and accuse him of theft, and had decided accordingly that he should sell it. This man might need a horse. Dismounting, he ran up and proposed the sale.

  The gentleman had been wanting another horse and when he saw this one he got so excited he hardly knew what to do. “Just now I’ve no silk to pay you with,” he said. “Would rice and some rice land in Toba do instead?”

  These sounded fine, but the young man feigned indifference. “It’s silk and cash I need,” he answered. “As I’m traveling I don’t know quite what I’ll do with rice land, but if you really need the horse I’ll be glad to oblige.”

  The gentleman put the horse through its paces and declared that it was as impressive to ride as to look at. He gave the young man rice and over six acres of rice fields, and even entrusted him with the care of his house. “Keep it as long as I’m gone,” he said. “You can give it back if I ever return to the Capital, and if I die it’s yours. I’ve no children so no one will come around to make any claims.” And off he went.