Japanese Tales

by Royall Tyler

  “Who are you?” Uda asked.

  “The master of this house.”

  “You mean you’re the Minister Tōru?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, the house is mine, and if I may say so, your living here too makes the place a bit small for me. I wonder what you suggest.”

  “This is very odd,” said Uda, his voice rising with anger. “When did I ever rob a man of his house? I live here because your heirs gave the place to me. Your being a ghost doesn’t mean you talk sense. What’s all this about?”

  The ghost vanished instantly and was never seen again.

  People were very impressed with His Majesty’s handling of the incident. “No ordinary man,” they said, “could possible have argued so forcefully with a ghost!”

  191.

  QUITE A BIT OF NONSENSE

  Once, Retired Emperor Uda took a carriage ride with one of his consorts to his Riverside Palace. The view from there was lovely, and that night the moon was very bright. Uda had the mats from his carriage spread out in one of the rooms, then he and the consort lay down. They were making love when a storeroom door opened and a voice spoke. “Who’s there?” Uda called.

  “Tōru,” said the voice. “I want your consort for me.”

  “You were just a minister when you were alive,” Uda retorted. “I’m an emperor. How dare you? Go away!”

  The ghost clutched at Uda, who was half dead with fright. His servants were all too far away to hear him cry out. Only the little oxherd was nearby, tending the ox from the carriage while it grazed. Uda had him get the carriage brought round and helped his consort into it. She was ghastly pale and could not even stand.

  As soon as Uda got home, he sent an exorcist to take care of the ghost. He was very lucky that the gods were still watching over him even though he had abdicated. There were sword cuts on the storeroom door, made by the gods as they slashed at Tōru’s ghost and forced him back inside.

  192.

  ONE MOUTHFUL

  Long ago, Retired Emperor Yōzei lived in a haunted palace in northern Kyoto.

  One night a guard was asleep in the Fishing Pavilion, a pavilion for parties and moon-viewing built out over the large garden pond. Suddenly he awoke to feel skinny fingers playing lightly over his face. Frightened by the eerie sensation, he drew his sword and seized the intruder. He had captured a miserable old man dressed all in pale blue.

  “This is where I lived a long time ago,” the old man said dolefully. “I’m Urashima’s younger brother, you know, and I’ve been here for twelve hundred years. Please let me go! If only you’ll build me a shrine and do me proper honor, I’ll willingly protect the place!”

  “But it isn’t just up to me,” the guard replied. “I’ll have to consult His Majesty about it.”

  “Oh you will, will you?” snarled the old man. He kicked the guard high in the air three times. The last time the guard came down, as limp as a rag, he opened his mouth and swallowed him. At first he had loooked quite ordinary, but then he grew so huge that he made just one mouthful of that guard.

  193.

  SUDDENLY, HORSE DUNG

  One evening an imperial bath attendant (a woman) went off on a visit, taking her little son Akoboshi and some friends of his along with her. As twilight fell the boys began a wrestling game outside the house. Suddenly something like a huge curtain (they never did get a good look it) came down over them from the wall they were playing under, and Akoboshi disappeared. The other boys ran off, terrified. They were afraid to tell anyone what had happened.

  The woman was very upset when she missed her son and hunted everywhere for him, but in vain. In the middle of the third night after his disappearance there was a knocking on her gate. Not daring to open it, she managed to cry out, “Who’s there?”

  “We want to give you back your son! Open up!”

  She was too frightened to obey. Next, she heard voices on her roof and a roar of laughter. Something fell, or was thrown, to the ground. Fighting back her terror, she lit a torch and went for a look. It was Akoboshi, lying limp and still. The only sign of life in him was that he blinked.

  She called a healer and his medium. When the medium went into her trance, Akoboshi was suddenly covered with some sort of brownish stuff. It turned out to be horse dung, three bucketfuls of it. Akoboshi never told what had happened to him, but he revived and was still alive ten years or so later.

  This happened around 1215. I got this from someone who was there at the time.

  194.

  THE MONK IN WHITE ARMOR

  Nakakane, the governor of Ōmi, was going every day to help his father, Lord Mitsutō, build the Hōjūji temple. He left the construction site one evening after sundown, and darkness fell while his carriage was rolling along in the vicinity of Tōji. There was no one behind him because all his attendants were running on ahead.

  By the faint light of the stars Nakakane saw a monk in white armor walking behind his carriage. How very odd! Lifting the carriage’s rear blind for a better look, he thought he recognized one Jirō, a monk whom his father had dismissed from his service and driven away. Perhaps Jirō was planning an attack. Still, it was all very strange.

  Instead of warning his attendants, Nakakane gripped the sword that was kept in the carriage for emergencies, jumped down, and faced the monk.

  “Is that you, Jirō?” he called threateningly. “What are you doing here? I don’t like the look of you!” And he charged.

  The monk grew huge, then seemed to vanish. Suddenly something knocked Nakakane’s hat off from above and lifted him up by the hair. Slashing over his head with the sword, Nakakane struck something solid. Whatever it was let go, and he fell to the ground with blood all over his robe and his right arm.

  Having no idea what had happened, Nakakane’s servants went on to Lord Mitsutō’s house as ordered. They only realized the carriage was empty when their master failed to get out of it. Back they went the way they had come, in great alarm, and discovered Nakakane in a field south of Tōji. He was dead, sword in hand. They carried him home and had a protective rite done over him for several days until he came back to life.

  The Retired Emperor asked for the sword, and it ended up in the treasury of Sanjūsangendō.

  195.

  LITTLE WHITE HAIRS

  One day when the “Sage Minister” Sanesuke was still only a counselor, he dozed off in his carriage on the way out of the palace. Hovering between dream and waking, he noticed a little man all in white catching up with him fast. On reaching the carriage the little man lifted the rear blind. Sanesuke was indignant. “What do you want?” he growled. “I don’t like you. Go away!”

  “I’m from the king of hell,” the little man answered. “My name is Little White Hairs.” He jumped into the carriage, hopped onto Sanesuke’s head, and disappeared.

  Back at home Sanesuke looked in the mirror and saw his first white hair. He had never been much intererested in religion before, but after that he began to think about the life to come.

  196.

  THE MAN WHO STOLE A DREAM

  Hiki no Makibito, a county magistrate’s son in Bitchū province, went to see a dream-reader about a puzzling dream he had had. Sitting chatting with the woman after she had given her reading, he heard a party of people approaching. It was the provincial governor’s eldest son, a boy of sixteen or so, accompanied by half a dozen men.

  The governor’s son was very handsome. “It this the dream-reader woman’s place?” he asked his men, and they told him it was. Makibito retired to an inner room and watched through a hole in the wall as the young man entered, told his dream, and asked what it meant. “That’s a remarkable dream, sir,” the woman replied. “It means you’re sure to end up as a minister at court. Yes indeed, that’s a wonderful dream! But be careful now, sir, don’t tell anyone else about it.” The young man looked very pleased. On leaving he gave her his cloak.

  Makibito emerged from the back. �
��I hear it’s possible to take over someone else’s dream,” he said. “Why not let me have that young gentleman’s? The governor will be off to the Capital again once his four-year term is over, but I’m your neighbor and always will be. Besides, my father’s the county magistrate and you might as well be nice to me.”

  The woman agreed and told him what to do. “Come in just as the young gentleman did,” she said, “and tell me his dream exactly as he told it himself.” Makibito cheerfully imitated the gentleman’s entrance and narration in every detail, and the woman gave him precesely the interpretation she had just given. Makibito removed his cloak, gave it to her, and left.

  After that he applied himself so studiously to his books that his scholarship came to the attention of the court. When tested, he did so well that he was sent to study in China, returning home after a long and fruitful stay to find favor with the emperor. In time he was promoted to minister.

  So it pays to steal someone else’s dream. The governor’s son never got an official post at all. Had he kept his dream he would have been a minister. You should keep your dreams to yourself!

  197.

  THE BUDDHA-OX

  During his tenure as governor of Echizen, Taira no Nakakata received from his province the gift of a black ox. After riding the animal for years, he at last gave it to a monk he knew at Kiyomizu in Kyoto, and the monk in turn passed it on to one Masanori who lived in Ōtsu at the southern end of Lake Biwa.

  When the holy man of Sekidera began rebuilding this venerable temple from the ruins left by long neglect, he found that although he had a good wagon to haul building materials in, he had no ox to pull it. Masanori, not far away in Ōtsu, heard of the problem and gave him the black ox. The holy man put it straight to work.

  The ox had finished its job when a great monk had a dream. Myōson, of Miidera near Ōtsu, dreamed that he went to Sekidera and found a black ox tethered before the main hall. He asked what it was doing there. “I am the Buddha Kashō,” the ox itself replied. “I came to Sekidera in the form of an ox to help the temple and spread the holy Teaching.” Then Myōson woke up.

  He was so impressed that in the morning he sent a disciple to find out whether there really was a black ox at Sekidera, one used for hauling construction materials. The disciple reported that the temple did indeed have a big black ox with rather flattened horns. It was tethered in front of the holy man’s lodging. According to the holy man, it hauled the materials for rebuilding the temple.

  Amazed, Myōson set out on foot for Sekidera with a crowd of his most distinguished monks. The ox was nowhere to be seen, but the holy man explained that he had sent it up on the hillside to graze, and promised to have it fetched right away. Actually the ox came down the hillside behind the main hall even as the boy sent for it started up. Myōson wanted it caught, but this proved impossible. At last, filled with pious reverence, Myōson declared that he would not insist further. “I’ll worship it from a distance, wherever it may roam,” he said, and prostrated himself repeatedly toward the ox. All the monks with him did the same.

  Having circled the hall three times clockwise, the ox lay down in front of it facing the altar. Myōson and his monks circumambulated the hall three times in turn. The more saintly-looking among them were all in tears.

  After Myōson left, news of the ox spread till every single inhabitant of the Capital, all the great lords and nobles, and even the regent himself with his wife, came to Sekidera to worship it. Sanesuke, the Minister of the Right, was the only one not to come.

  When Kin’sue, the chancellor, made the pilgrimage he met such a press of commoners at the temple that he thought it unsafe to get out of his carriage (as even so great a man as he would normally have done) before entering the temple grounds. Instead, he had his carriage drive straight in and up to the ox’s stall. The ox seemed deeply offended by this sacrilege because it suddenly broke its tether and bolted for the hills. The chancellor got out at once and burst into tears at the thought that his conduct had displeased the ox and made it run away.

  Perhaps moved by his heartfelt repentance, the ox soon came slowly back down the hillside and lay down again in its stall. The chancellor fed it grass he had gathered with his own hands; and when it ate the grass, although clearly not very hungry, he covered his face with his sleeve and sobbed. So did everyone looking on.

  After the mass pilgrimage had continued for four or five days, the holy man dreamed that the ox spoke to him. “My work at this temple is done now,” it said, “and in the evening of the day after tomorrow I’ll be going home.” The holy man wept when he woke up, and quickly reported the dream to Myōson. Myōson too was in tears. He told the holy man that someone at Miidera had had the same dream.

  Word of this fresh development brought even greater throngs to Sekidera. On the day, all the monks of Miidera and Mount Hiei were there, and the surrounding hills rang with their chanting of the Amida Sutra. The scene recalled nothing so much as that other day so long ago when the Buddha Shakyamuni lay dying, surrounded by all the countless grieving beings who loved him.

  As the day wore on and the ox still looked quite normal, certain perverse individuals in the crowd began joking that it seemed in no hurry to kick the bucket. But when evening came the recumbent ox got up, lumbered to the main hall, then twice ran a set of three circumambulations round it. Suddenly it seemed in pain and began abruptly lying down and getting up again; but it still managed to complete two or three more sets of circumambulations before it returned to its stall and lay down with its head, like the Buddha’s on his deathbed, facing the north. Then it stretched out full length on its side, with its legs extended, and died. All the pilgrims gathered for the occasion — lords and ladies, common men and women of every degree, monks and laymen — burst into loud sobs and chanted the Amida Sutra with abandoned fervor.

  After the crowd had left, they dragged the ox a little way up the hillside and buried it. The grave was topped with a proper marker and surrounded with a simple picket fence. Although it was summer and the carcass had been buried rather than cremated, the grave gave off no odor at all. Every seven days thereafter sutras were read at the grave until the forty-ninth day was past; and services continued to be performed in the same way, at the proper intervals, until the anniversary of the ox’s passing.

  The buddha of Sekidera is Miroku. It can be fairly said that every person who travels between the Capital and the eastern or northern provinces worships at Sekidera, and that a single act of heartfelt worship here has assured each pilgrim of the karma to be born again into Miroku’s perfect world. It was to give us the chance to gain such merit that Kashō took the form of an ox and urged us to greater faith. How strange and wonderful a tale the story makes!

  198.

  THE FALCONER’S DREAM

  A falconer with many sons once lived in the western part of the Capital, near Saga Moor. Falconry was his whole life. He kept seven or eight hawks at home (just feeding them, especially in summer, meant killing so many creatures!) and twice that number of dogs. Nights he would sit till dawn with a hawk on his fist; and every day, whatever the season, he would be out in the fields hunting pheasants.

  When he was old, he came down with a little illness and one night was unable to sleep. Toward dawn when he finally dozed off, he had this dream.

  There was a hole in a mound on Saga Moor, and he lived in it with his wife and children. They had been awfully cold that winter, but now spring was here and the day was so warm they all went out to sun themselves and pick fresh greens. The nice weather made them wander off in all directions a long way from home.

  Suddenly a babble of voices rose from the wood north of Uzumasa, mingled with the jingling of bells. The sound all but stopped his heart with terror. From the top of a rise he saw men approaching on swift horses, wearing brocade caps, spotted cloaks, bearskin chaps, and swords in boarhide scabbards. The fiendish hawks on their fists had tiny bells on and were straining to fly.

  On they came, spread acros
s Saga Moor, and others walked before them in rush hats, dark-blue cloaks, red leather sleeves, leather trousers, and boots of fur. These were beating the thickets with sticks; and huge, belled dogs, like lions, ran beside them, jingling like the hawks but in deeper tones.

  His eyes went dim and his head swam. “I’ve got to warn my wife and children!” he thought. “I’ve got to hide them!” But they were widely scattered and could not possibly hear him. He dove in panic into a deep thicket while Tarō, his eldest and dearest son, hid in another nearby.

  The dog-keepers and falconers were all over the moor. In horror he watched a dog-keeper head for Tarō’s thicket, beating the tall, dense pampas grasses flat while the dog, its bell jingling, followed, intently sniffing the ground. It was all over for Tarō.

  Sure enough, Tarō started up and the keeper gave a shout. The falconer, who had hung back a little, released his hawk. Tarō flew desperately, high in the air, with the hawk in fierce pursuit; then dropped again, exhausted. From below, the hawk seized his breast and head. The two fell. The dog-keeper rushed up, pulled off the hawk, picked up Tarō, and wrung his neck. Tarō let out a pitiful cry that pierced the poor father’s heart like a sword.

  And what about his second son, Jirō? He saw a dog, sniffing its way toward Jirō’s thicket, suddenly charge and catch Jirō in its jaws. Though Jirō flapped his wings frantically, the keeper ran up and wrung his neck, too.

  “And my third son, Saburō?” he wondered. Another dog was sniffing toward Saburō’s thicket. When the trapped Saburō started up, the keeper knocked him down with a blow on the head from his stick.