IROKA: TALES OF JAPAN 
 
IROKA: 
 
 TALES OF JAPAN 
 
 By 
 
 Adachi Kinnosuke 
 
 New York 
 
 Doubleday & McClure Co. 
 1900 
 
M! 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY 
 ADACHI KINNOSUKE 
 
TO 
 WALTER R. LAMBUTH 
 
-TT7HEN I think of it, I 
 
 W have said everything 
 in the title of the 
 book. Only . . . 
 
 " Tales, my child, mere tales" 
 my mother used to say ; "but 
 history would not give you so 
 tme a truth . 
 
 And she told them, there by 
 the little bed of mine, in order 
 that romances and dreams 
 might kidnap her child and 
 away with him far into the 
 fairies homeland. 
 
 Years and years ago! 
 
 But her voice is still ringing 
 a silver bell on the outermost 
 verge of my memory s horizon. 
 
/ do not know why I have left 
 those days so far behind me : I 
 am such a dunce, and perhaps 
 that is the reason. Whenever 
 I succeed in proving, however, 
 that I am a fool, and when my 
 heart takes unto itself the hue 
 of the clear sky which is none 
 too seldom then I steal an 
 excursion or two backward 
 through the sins, storms, tears 
 of this dirty struggle called life. 
 And here are the results of 
 my wanderings, and I offer 
 them to you. 
 
 ADACHI KINNOSUKE. 
 
 AT THE HERMIT S PERCH, GLENDALE, 
 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 The Twenty-second day of the Ninth Moon 
 of the Thirty-second Year of Meiji. 
 
Contents 
 
 UNDER THE CHERRY CLOUD OF SUMIDA . x 
 SANGATSU SAKURANO SAKUJIBUN ... 25 
 
 A SAMURAI GIRL 53 
 
 A JAPANESE GARDEN 6 5 
 
 ABOARD THE "AKAGI " .... 93 
 
 A JAPANESE SWORD IJ 7 
 
 HIRATA KOJIRO I 37 
 
 KATAKI-UCHI T 57 
 
 THE DEATH OF A GHOST . . . .181 
 A DREAM ON SUWA-YAMA .... 205 
 IN THE OLD CASTLE MOAT OF KAMEYAMA 229 
 
 A GEISHA 2 53 
 
 SAKUMA SUKENARI . - . > . . .271 
 
 NOTE. Some of these stories are reprinted from The 
 Criterion, Ainsleis Magazine, Town Topics, The Over 
 land Monthly, Poet-Lore, and The Los Angeles Times. 
 
Under the Cherry Cloud of 
 Sumida 
 
Under the Cherry Cloud of 
 Sumida 
 
 Eeally it was a bit of gauze torn off from 
 the skirt of that vain coquette called 
 Spring, in her all-too-hasty and careless 
 way of passing over this earth, and which 
 was caught by the bare branches of trees 
 which had stood lonely, looking very 
 black and ugly upon the snow, all winter 
 long. There were some, not many, who 
 said that it was a cloud made up of ten jo s 
 faces blushing over their first experience 
 in love. An error. But, of course, we 
 can see how they made a mistake like this, 
 seeing that they were poets. And as for 
 those people who insisted that it was noth 
 ing but cherry blossoms on the banks 
 
4 1ROKA: 
 
 of Sumida, they knew no more about 
 what they were talking than a mathema 
 tician knows of love. 
 
 But, not to be too dogmatic in this age 
 of assertions, we will be generous enough 
 to make a compromise and say that under 
 the cherry cloud of Sumida there stood a 
 tea-house. 
 
 And it looked, in all truth, as if every 
 thing its straw roof, its bamboo curtains, 
 its sign with the characters upon it which 
 certainly did not seem very much blessed 
 with modesty as far as its fat strokes were 
 concerned, its wooden benches with cush 
 ions on them, its show-cases full of all sorts 
 of elegant temptations for the palate 
 everything, I say, seemed as if it were made 
 out of the strokes of a Japanese painter of 
 the Hokusai school. But there was one 
 feature of the tea-house which, more than 
 aught else, seemed to have danced out of 
 a picture a little waitress. Always I saw 
 her standing in the doorway, and she was 
 by far the most tempting invitation to the 
 weary and to those who were not, so that 
 they were young, for the matter of that 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 5 
 
 to sit down and enjoy what might be called 
 a rest from pleasure. 
 
 She was not a daisy with the conceit of 
 a magnolia, this maid, but a daisy, who, 
 for some reason or other of which she her 
 self was not aware, laughed at a magnolia. 
 There came to her tea-house many a great 
 lady from Tokio and patronised her in a 
 condescending manner. But had she not 
 offered a hot cup of rice every morning to 
 the God of Luck, and a prayer along with 
 it? And so she was not in the least an 
 noyed at these things. And, to do her jus 
 tice, there were days when, standing under 
 the cherry cloud, she did not know that 
 she, perhaps, was the fairer of the two. 
 There was one man who thought there 
 was no question on that point. 
 
 This particular one, who used to go out 
 to Sumida to " see the cherry blossoms," 
 as he said with a wink, was an artist a 
 fellow-citizen of mine in a little Bohemia 
 in a modest corner of the great Capital of 
 Nihon. 
 
1ROKA: 
 
 II 
 
 Asada Matsuyo was his name. 
 
 Twenty-five centuries ago he might have 
 been a god. But now, coming so much 
 out of time, he was nothing but a fool; a 
 crank, with a crack somewhere in his cra 
 nium at least that is what the honest 
 people thought and said of him, aye, to 
 him. It was a very happy thing, however, 
 that he had absolutely no taste for public 
 applause or blame. A few of us who, like 
 him, were pointed out by the wise public 
 as fools, but, unlike him, did not have any 
 reason to be foolish, could see in him a 
 spark now and then which well merited 
 a shrine. And often in our enthusiastic 
 outburst of insanity, we rose to the task 
 and reared a temple to him. And be 
 cause we had no wood or stone, or mud, 
 or anything that would cost money, with 
 which to build it, we took our hearts as 
 the building materials. 
 
 To think of it, it is a very strange thing 
 
TALES OF JAPAN j 
 
 that the people insisted in catching him 
 at a wrong place, by a wrong end. If one 
 were to catch a cat by her tail he would 
 be made to see very soon that the tail was 
 not the right place. Even a kettle., if you 
 will be blind and hold it by its bottom 
 which is always turned to the flame,, your 
 hand will have an emphatic mark of your 
 blunder. But our Asada, being nothing 
 but a divine painter, was not, it seemed, 
 allowed to be as vindictive and high of 
 temper as a cat or a kettle. 
 
 For example, once he painted a mood of 
 a servant girl with a heavy bucket of water. 
 The burden gave a sad defect to the bal 
 ance of her shoulders and her unoccupied 
 hand seemed as if it were desperately try 
 ing to seize a bulk of air far away. A very 
 few strokes of his brush went to the mak 
 ing of the face of the poor servant girl 
 a couple of strokes for her eyes, one for 
 her nose, another for her mouth that 
 was all. It was there, however, the per 
 fect picture of that sarcastic cynicism of 
 a working girl. " I work from the death 
 of the stars to that of the sun, 365 days 
 
8 IROKA: 
 
 every year. What is the result? This 
 bucket of water is as heavy as it ever was 
 and my mistress is as cross as sin. Life 
 is a practical joke of the gods. Our tears, 
 curses, sweat, groans, laughters, fits all 
 are for the amusement of the bored divini 
 ties! 
 
 I say all these were there in that sketch 
 yes, perfectly. People did not see these 
 things, however, perhaps because they 
 were there. But they wanted to see the 
 photograph of a servant girl with the right 
 number of hairs in her eyebrows, with the 
 exact diameter of the pores marked care 
 fully in her skin; and the photograph of 
 every muscle in her body. They wanted 
 to see even the dirt on the water bucket. 
 They wanted to see these things because 
 in their way of thinking, and in the name 
 of wisdom, when were they ever in error? 
 the artist ought have had them. When 
 the infallible public did not find the 
 things which it looked for, it called him 
 names. 
 
 " Very well," said he to himself and to 
 the world at large, " understand me well, 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 9 
 
 good people, I am painting only for my 
 own amusement, for my own self. I will, 
 therefore, do as I like! " And he did. 
 He was a happy fellow because he wanted 
 the world to forget him, and the world is 
 always pleased at that job, finding it not 
 the hardest thing under heaven. 
 
 But it was within him, that flame which 
 something higher and brighter than the 
 sun had lit in his soul, and whose marks 
 escaped now and then, through his fingers, 
 through his brushes. And those who had 
 in their make-up anything to be scorched, 
 when they came in touch with his canvas, 
 they were scorched truly. But his pic 
 tures were as rare as the visitations of a 
 good fairy. And one must indeed be an 
 intimate friend of his to prevail upon him 
 to show one of his " colour-studies " on 
 paper. And for a long time I thought that 
 he treated every mortal alike in this ex 
 cessive modesty. But I was greatly in 
 error. And Chika was the occasion of 
 the discovery of my mistake. 
 
10 1ROKA: 
 
 III 
 
 Chika is the name of the daisy bloom 
 ing beneath the dewdrops gathered by the 
 cherry petals of Sumida, and when one 
 day, tired of books and sick of life, I de 
 serted my den and dragged my cane on the 
 Sumida bank, it so happened, in the 
 motherly thoughtfulness of Providence, 
 which we fools are so apt to call " mere 
 chance/ that I stopped at the tea-house. 
 
 A cup of tea of that classic warmth of 
 colour and of the traditional flavour with 
 a cherry petal boating upon it, is always 
 good. Far better, however, it is when it s 
 served as the mirror of a charming smile 
 on a pretty face which bends over it. And 
 it pleased my weakness to render unto this 
 unpretentious female Caesar, whose realm 
 is as wide as the human heart, what was 
 hers. 
 
 " I regret that I am not a painter," said 
 I, letting my eyes say the rest. 
 
 " Oh, honourable guest, I thank you! " 
 
TALES OF JAPAN \\ 
 
 she said,, naively answering to my implied 
 compliment. " But I am sure you can 
 paint, because you look at me with the 
 same kind of eyes as his." 
 
 "His?" 
 
 " Oh, I have a friend who paints." 
 
 " Well, he is an enviable fellow, I am 
 sure." 
 
 A pleasant laughter and, like a many- 
 coloured flash, she disappeared behind a 
 screen. A moment later she brought out 
 a roll of paper. I unrolled it. 
 
 " What is the honourable guest smiling 
 about, may I know? " 
 
 " Well, I believe," said I, I have the 
 honour of your friend s acquaintance." 
 
 " A ah ? " in the voice of a dreamer 
 frightened out of sleep; and then recover 
 ing, with a smile; "the honourable guest 
 is joking? " 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 He had painted her, not exactly as she 
 was, but as he had seen her felt her. I 
 mean that his eyes were, for any of the 
 divinities he adored, a mount of trans 
 figuration. The picture was not a picture 
 
12 IROKA: 
 
 of a girl rather it was a translation in 
 colours of the height of his imagination s 
 flight. 
 
 The girl in the picture was serving a 
 cup of tea to an owl. That easy grace 
 which Mature gives to a girl in the self-f or- 
 getfulness of her hearty merriment, a bit 
 of coquetry, a trifle of condescension, the 
 amiability of one who is sure of her con 
 quest, were all put on the curve of her lips, 
 on the uplifting of her eyelids. And as 
 if the ambition of the painter were not 
 satisfied with the beauty of his dreams, he 
 placed, doubtless in order to bring out by 
 contrast all the delicate charms of the 
 maid, the most grim of philosophers in 
 the absent-minded stare of the owl s 
 eyes. 
 
 " Do you like the picture? " asked I of 
 the girl. 
 
 " It is very pretty, I think but " 
 
 " Oh, but how much prettier is the orig 
 inal than " 
 
 " Oh, do you think so?" Her eyes were 
 round. " Really, when he brought it to 
 me, I looked at it a long time. Then he 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 13 
 
 told me that it was my picture. Well/ 
 said I, and I recognised myself for the first 
 time." 
 
 IV 
 
 A change a very natural one to me, be 
 cause I knew a thing or two; a startling, 
 strange one to the world came over our 
 friend, the painter. 
 
 " We knew it was in you, old fellow! " 
 I heard a Bohemian say, in congratulating 
 the rising reputation of the artist. Here 
 is his retort: 
 
 " Why, then, in the name of heaven, 
 didn t you draw it out of me before?" 
 He was so solemn that his friend had to 
 laugh to make matters even. Within a 
 year and a half, Tokio believed him every 
 inch a god, and a certain school of critics, 
 seeing that Asada was too big for the 
 world, was already preparing for him a 
 nameless, blank tombstone just like the 
 one on St. Helena. 
 
 Then, one fine morning came the ru- 
 
14 1RQKA: 
 
 mour of his marriage. His foes sneered 
 at it and enjoyed their " I told you so! " 
 better than most women. And his friends 
 opened their mouths as if they were invit 
 ing him to bury himself therein, and said 
 with the first breath which came back to 
 them: 
 
 " After all a genius is a queer sort of a 
 fool!" 
 
 He dropped out of the world as suddenly 
 as he was introduced to the drawing-room 
 of fame. This time his friends had no 
 trace of him. And I, filled with the spirit 
 of public interest, and in the name of Ni 
 kon s art, started out in search of the lost 
 genius. I took a short cut. I went after 
 Chika. And, as is usually the case, I 
 had no trouble in finding her mother and 
 her home. As for the daisy herself, it was 
 quite another matter. 
 
 " Do you have any idea where she is? " 
 " Yes, sir; she went out boating with 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 15 
 
 some girls. Shirobei, our neighbour,, took 
 them out. There was his friend with him 
 also." 
 
 "May I ask who this friend of your 
 neighbour is? " 
 
 " Yes, sir; he is a clerk, I think, in a 
 clothing store in Tokio." 
 
 " Thanks. By-the-bye, I saw some pic 
 tures, two years ago, don t you remember, 
 at your tea-house on Sumida bank. Do 
 you know what Chika-san has done with 
 them?" 
 
 "A ah! so you are after the pictures 
 also, young master? So many persons 
 came to ask after them, and because the 
 honourable masters wanted to buy them, 
 Chika sold them almost all of them." 
 
 "Sol" 
 
 " Yes, sir; maybe there is one left." 
 
 She rose, went to her bureau, and 
 brought me a roll. We unrolled it to 
 gether. Painted upon it was a dilapidated 
 tramp, sitting in the dust of a highway, 
 and the threads of his rags were slipping 
 and flying away from him in the wind, as 
 if they were thoroughly ashamed of the 
 
1 6 IROKA: 
 
 forlorn wretch. He was talking to his 
 dog. And the dog had a look upon his 
 face which became better a potentate of an 
 absolute kingdom listening to the prayers 
 of a beggar. At the bottom of the roll 
 were these words, written in the stormy 
 vigour of a certain pen of which I know 
 a thing or two: 
 
 " My Last Picture." 
 
 " It was sent to her just about a month 
 ago, now/ said the old lady. 
 
 "When is Chika-san coming home? 
 I want to buy this picture if I can." 
 
 " It s past time now. She may be here 
 any moment." 
 
 Fully two hours patient waiting. And 
 in an hour or so after the night had fallen, 
 she came back gay as a bird. 
 
 When I spoke of the picture, she con 
 sented at once to sell it to me for a price 
 I am ashamed to mention here, and added: 
 
 te Isn t it very strange ? He was very 
 nice and sweet to me a long time. Then 
 one day he came down the road, but when 
 he was within a hundred feet of me, he 
 turned round sharply, all of a sudden, and 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 17 
 
 went away. I did not call after him; I 
 never thought of it. Since then he never 
 came. He went away without a word. 
 After about a month wasn t it, mother? 
 he began to send me pretty pictures and 
 letters which we could not understand; but 
 our neighbour Shirobei, he read them,, and 
 he said they were very pretty." 
 
 " May I ask what were you doing when 
 he came down the road the last time? " 
 
 " Oh, I was with Sadakichi, that young 
 fellow you saw just a minute ago he 
 works in a big Tokio store well, we were 
 lying in a clover field near here and laugh 
 ing. I did not see him till he was very 
 close to me." 
 
 " I see." 
 
 " Are you going already, young mas 
 ter?" 
 
 "Yes; good night!" 
 2 
 
i8 1RQKA: 
 
 VI 
 
 Honour,, wealth, art-enthusiasm had 
 been blowing on their big horns to sum 
 mon Asada. He did not appear. What 
 could a fellow like me do? I heard that 
 Chika had married the clerk of the 
 Tokio store, and they together moved to 
 Kioto. 
 
 As for the genius, we heard nothing 
 about him. His parents thought that 
 he was out on his pilgrimage to the art 
 treasuries of the empire. 
 
 VII 
 
 Five years after his disappearance. 
 
 The artistic public of Japan had cried 
 after him, at his loss, but just like a baby 
 howling after a piece of candy, it ex 
 hausted itself in its lamentation, and by- 
 and-bye became somewhat sleepy and 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 19 
 
 seemed to have dozed off. But there 
 were a few unfortunate ones who could 
 not, do what they might,, forget him. 
 
 On my way home to my native town, I 
 stopped at the Capital of Flowers, as Kioto 
 is called. 
 
 It was in the season when Nature be 
 comes absolutely wild in her prodigality, 
 even in that island home of extravagancy 
 I mean in matters of flowers, dreams of 
 purple haze, of perfumes, of coquettes both 
 of feathers and dresses. 
 
 One who is thinking seriously of depart 
 ing to eternity ought, by way of prepara 
 tion, to spend a few spring seasons at Kioto. 
 No, time does not seem to exist there, and 
 indeed, one who wants to be intoxicated 
 by the sdk of vernal sunbeams has no time 
 to spend in thinking of any such thing as 
 Time. The whole city decks herself in 
 honour of the flowers, and you will see 
 every street of the ancient capital turn 
 into an avenue filled with a dense popula 
 tion in the exaggerated butterfly wings 
 called the sleeves of the Japanese kimono. 
 
 And I abandoned myself completely to 
 
20 1ROKA: 
 
 the voluptuous seductions of the Kioto 
 spring. I went from one meisho to an 
 other. I flirted with every cherry tree that 
 was a-bloom and left my tribute in classic 
 couplets penned on a rectangular card, 
 pendent from their branches. 
 
 Colour and perfume; love and sdk! 
 
 Late in an afternoon I was at the Kiyo- 
 mizu Temple. 
 
 For centuries it had been the rendezvous 
 of pious pilgrims,, and the pilgrims of art, 
 of philosophers, poets, and especially of 
 lovers. The temple is built on the waist 
 of a hill. One of its verandas looks down 
 into a court many hundred feet below. 
 They called the veranda "the Lover s 
 Leap," because ever since the temple stood 
 there came to it lovers who were unhappy 
 in this world, and, true to their religious 
 convictions, they took their leap from that 
 veranda into eternity to enjoy in the realm 
 beyond the bliss of love which this life de 
 nied them. They say, and I do believe 
 them, that if the bodies of all the fair girls 
 who have thrown themselves down from 
 the veranda could be gathered in a heap, 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 21 
 
 they would more than fill the chasm. But 
 the reason why the people had not closed 
 the veranda or shunned it altogether was 
 because there was something there that 
 would more than erase all the unpleasant 
 associations. And if you were there with 
 me on that evening, watching the twilight 
 come home flying on her purple wings to 
 perch upon the cherry trees, and could 
 hear the far-away melody of the unseen 
 belfries as it tumbled into the valley over, 
 the heads of pines, as if it were the lullaby 
 to put the twilight to sleep, then you 
 would not hesitate to agree with me. Upon 
 my word, it deserves an ode, a hymn. But 
 in that divinely enticing languor, such a 
 task as composition is hardly thought of 
 at least by such an idle hand as mine, and 
 I sighed my compliments and appreciation 
 of that lyric of a view. 
 
 "Jumped?" 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "Where is he now?" 
 
22 IRQKA: 
 
 There was a great confusion. And the 
 people rushed from all quarters to the 
 other end of the veranda. It seems that 
 even while I was admiring the evening 
 fading on the pink veil of cherries,, there 
 was a man on the other end of the veranda 
 around a corner who thought, for some 
 reason or other,, that life was too distaste 
 ful to him. 
 
 " He was a crazy young fellow," I heard 
 a voice say; " I have seen him hanging 
 about the place for some time. Love? 
 Oh, no! The idea is absurd. He was in 
 miserable rags, and I know he must have 
 starved a long while. No love affair in 
 his case at least! " 
 
 The following morning I took up a 
 newspaper. A glance at it and it fell 
 from my hands. 
 
 On the first page in large letters: 
 
 " The Discovery of the Long Lost 
 Painter! 
 
 "Asada a mangled heap under the 
 Cherry Cloud of the Kiyomizu Temple! " 
 
 And the whole page was devoted to him. 
 It told what a transcendent genius he was, 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 23 
 
 how the volcanic zeal for his art had been 
 too much for his frail body, how he had 
 lost his mind; and it commented exhaust 
 ively on the relation between genius and 
 insanity. 
 
 The art-loving people of Kioto buried 
 him with all the expressions of their ten 
 der respects. Over where he rests is a 
 marble shaft with some fine sentences cut 
 into its sheen. Once he had cried for 
 bread, and now they gave him stone for 
 such is the way of the world. 
 
 As I watered the last resting-place of 
 my comrade with a dewdrop straight 
 from my heart, my thought wandered back 
 to the avenue of cherry cloud of Sumida, 
 to the tea-house and to her. I knew she 
 was somewhere in the city of Kioto, and 
 could not refrain from the idea that the 
 very marble with his name cut deep into 
 its snowy light would move at the sound 
 of her voice. 
 
 With the help of a register and the 
 police it was not difficult to find her. I 
 recognised her at the first glance. She 
 had grown very much stouter; her mar- 
 
24 IROKA: TALES OF JAPAN 
 
 riage with the clerk, her kitchen work, and 
 the long afternoons at her washtubs agreed 
 with her perfectly. She gazed at me a 
 while, ransacking the bag of her memory. 
 At last she recognised me. With both of 
 her plump bare arms in the air, and her 
 eyes merry and round with satisfaction at 
 recalling a face of so long ago, she cried: 
 
 " A ah, young master, I know you! I 
 know you! " 
 
 I was shocked. But I had the fool 
 hardy persistence to stick to my plan. 
 
 " Your friend Asada do you remem 
 ber him ? He died yesterday in this 
 city " 
 
 "He did! Is that so? Ha, ha, ha! 
 Well, I m sorry ... he was such a 
 funny man, wasn t he, though?" 
 
Sangatsu Sakurano Sakuji- 
 bun 
 
Sangatsu Sakurano Sakuji- 
 bun* 
 
 A Japanese Love Story 
 
 The beginning of it all was on a dream of 
 a fete day of the sangatsu sakurano saku- 
 jibun. That, as you know, is also the sea 
 son when some other kind of flowers open. 
 And it came to pass in the dovetail work 
 of Providence, there by the shrine of Uji- 
 gami, that they met for the first time, 
 Hosoi Shizuma and Tone. 
 
 They were as young as the year. But 
 those were the days now so old when 
 the hearts of people flowered, like mume, 
 
 * The third month when the cherry blossoms 
 blow. 
 
28 1ROKA: 
 
 very early in the year. There was one 
 thing which was not very kindly to them; 
 for that was the time when the clwnin 
 (man-of-market) was classed, in the con 
 tempt of the public, just above the eta 
 (the pariah); and wealth did not serve, as 
 it does to-day, for the men of lower birth 
 and humbler intellect as their balloon. 
 
 An old adage in Japan: " Mind and 
 money do not go together! " 
 
 And Yone* for Fate is ever jealous of 
 the fair was a daughter of a chonin. 
 
 And Hosoi was a samurai. 
 
 And Love why, he has no caste at all. 
 
 And that is just where the trouble came. 
 
 II 
 
 At home, when they were back from the 
 fete, Tone s father said to her mother: 
 
 "What a handsome man-of-hue he is 
 getting to be the young master of Hosoi, 
 I mean. Almost as fine a fellow as your 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 29 
 
 husband was when you married him, 
 wife?" 
 
 "Hum!" 
 
 A pause then she said: 
 
 " It s just that way with that blood 
 stained family of Hosoi. Their fine looks 
 are not deeper than their skin, and you 
 would say that they are Buddhas. . . . 
 But don t talk to me! Ghouls, demons, 
 that s what they are, I tell you! " 
 
 In order to understand her, you ought 
 to know one or two things. About two 
 generations before this when samurai 
 used to call their swords " souls " Tone s 
 grandfather on her mother s side, touched 
 the sword of Hosoi s ancestor. The samu 
 rai saw that it was intentional. Now, a 
 touch of a chonin was thought to be the 
 worst stain on the purity of a samurai s 
 sword. The samurai was, perhaps, the 
 most sensitive being under the sky, and he 
 could no more stand the stain of that type 
 on his sword than a high-spirited woman 
 the loss of her virtue. The result was that 
 the sword of Hosoi s forefather was washed 
 in blood at once, on the very spot. 
 
30 1ROKA: 
 
 They talked some more, the parents of 
 Yone. 
 Yone listened. 
 
 Ill 
 
 " An impossible case! " mused Hosoi in 
 his study. 
 
 " Impossible ? " Love has no such word 
 in his vocabulary: so he danced in Hosoi s 
 eyes and just laughed at him. 
 
 As for Yone, she prayed Musubino-Kami 
 in particular, and all the other eight mil 
 lion gods in general. And why should 
 not all the gods and Buddhas help her? 
 To be sure, it was no small thing that she 
 was asking of the divine. Let a man 
 jump over in those days, I mean the 
 wall between the samurai class and clionin! 
 If he succeeds, then let him try next to 
 leap over the moon; and I am sure that he 
 will find the latter the easier of the two. 
 But Yone thought very properly, too 
 that the gods and Buddhas were made for 
 that sort of thing. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 31 
 
 When,, therefore, her faith in the omnip 
 otence of the deities was thoroughly es 
 tablished in her heart, and the doubt as to 
 the success of her love affair was a mere 
 cloud of yesterday, there came a pair of 
 large tears into her eyes, bright and pure 
 as her hope; and a star stealing through 
 the fissure of the amado fell into them and 
 turned them into wedding jewels. 
 
 The night was far advanced. 
 
 Through her tears looking at the star 
 she was sure it was her guardian star 
 she smiled, on her lonely bed. OK, never 
 in all her days had she been so lonely as 
 on that night. She fell asleep. In her 
 dreams, however, she was not alone. 
 
 IV 
 
 Scarce four months later. By the sea: 
 
 " I can but worship you from afar." 
 
 " Hush, Yone! My lotus-faced girl is 
 
 as pure and white and noble as Fuji-yama. 
 
 A Buddha should worship her, since she 
 
 is too good for the adorations of mortals." 
 
32 IROKA: 
 
 "Oh, no! I dare not ask for too much. 
 Let me see you now and then I won t 
 come too close to you. For, do you know, 
 whenever you smile on me as sweetly as 
 you are doing now, I am afraid that the 
 gods will punish me for being too happy." 
 
 " What nonsense! " 
 
 The twilight was falling upon them, 
 and the moon was weaving a curtain of 
 silver muslin with the sea fog. 
 
 " Something the matter with her; I m 
 dead certain of that! " said the tradesman s 
 worthy wife in one of her prophetic 
 moments. 
 
 " But what colour do you make out your 
 fox to be, wife?" 
 
 " Love foolishness, my dear! " 
 
 "Well, I ll be " 
 
 It was very plain to see, and no wonder! 
 She could not hide anything, the blushing 
 neophyte! She made eyes at the flowers 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 33 
 
 in the garden, without knowing it; and a 
 note of a nightingale made her quiver. 
 
 There was a terrible confusion in the 
 tradesman s house one night. A fire broke 
 out not very far from it. The mother 
 sought her daughter in her room. There 
 was something there that made the mother 
 forget the fire. 
 
 The bed was spread on the soft matted 
 floor., to be sure, but it was empty as a 
 cicada s shell. 
 
 Some time afterward: 
 
 " Daughter, my daughter, where in the 
 world have you been? You! " cried her 
 mother, when suddenly she came upon 
 Tone in a dense cloud of smoke, some dis 
 tance from the burning house. Yone 
 stammered out that she had fled at the 
 very first alarm of fire. In her excitement 
 she had forgot to arouse the house before 
 she left it. 
 
 Aye! But there was too little sign of 
 disorder in her toilet and dress. But a 
 woman! has she ever forgot her appear 
 ance under any circumstances? 
 3 
 
34 IROKA: 
 
 VI 
 
 Yone shrieked. 
 
 But what really happened to her was 
 that she fell into her mother s arms, that 
 was all nothing so terrible in that, surely! 
 But the time and the place justified her 
 hysteria. 
 
 It was after midnight, and she was 
 climbing half way up the bamboo fence 
 near the back door of her house. 
 
 Her parents could get nothing out of 
 Yone. Oh, they punished her, coaxed her, 
 threatened her, and all that in vain. 
 
 To the great surprise of Yone, her par 
 ents allowed her full freedom. There is 
 something ticklish in that sort of liberty 
 that is to say, to those who are world- 
 wise. And Yone, simple as she was, did 
 feel rather uncomfortable. But what 
 could she do ? Youth, poetry, passion 
 were her masters, and they are the great 
 est cynics on earth, who laugh at all 
 precautions. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 35 
 
 " "What must he be thinking of me of 
 my absence? " was her thought, her only 
 thought, night and day. 
 
 VII 
 
 " Doubted? Oh, no! How could I, 
 and live?" 
 
 " Oh, my poor, poor lord! Your pain 
 was cruel, so cruel, I know! " 
 
 " But what a paradise after the tor 
 ment! " 
 
 The voices were quick, passionate ; 
 nevertheless, they were those of devotees 
 who worshipped. One might have said 
 that the lovers but articulated the wild 
 music of their heart-throbs. That was the 
 only thing which Tone s father, who 
 played a spy on his daughter, could catch 
 distinctly that night. The rest was the 
 sweet wedding of murmurs, like a concert 
 of sighs. 
 
 On his way home, Hosoi did not know 
 that he had an escort. The young samu 
 rai, masked, disappeared through a wicket. 
 
36 1ROKA: 
 
 His escort remained out in the night. 
 There where he stood, ten thousand shad 
 ows of the universe tumbled down in a 
 heap about him. He outraged the so 
 lemnity, which was neither of man nor of 
 things, with his antics. His gestures were 
 monstrous. As for his facial expressions, 
 they were far more hideous, as ugly as the 
 ugliest children of imagination, because 
 one could not see them, and had to guess 
 at them. 
 
 When you remember what Hosoi s an 
 cestor had done to that of his wife, do you 
 wonder that the poor man-of-market lost 
 his head when he found that his daughter s 
 lover was a Hosoi? 
 
 VIII 
 
 One corner of the dozo (a thick-walled 
 godown) of the chonin, on the following 
 day, was turned into a Spanish cloister of 
 the sunless days of the Inquisition. 
 
 Tone s arms were fastened at her back; 
 and the stout hemp rope had no heart. It 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 37 
 
 was flung across the horizontal beam over 
 her head, and its free end was wound about 
 a cylindrical roller turned by a crank. 
 
 "Consent, will you?" shrieked her 
 mother, savage as a tigress. 
 
 At the obstinate silence of her daughter, 
 she turned the crank. The girl was sus 
 pended in the air, her toes barely touching 
 the earthen floor. The entire weight of 
 her body, therefore, was on her twisted 
 arms. Oh, they billowed, twitched, and 
 twisted in the paroxysm of pain, those ex 
 quisite lily arms of hers! There were no 
 tears in her eyes, into which blood rushed 
 in tongues of fire. There is something of 
 a martyr in every woman. Yone had a 
 great deal of it. Her black hair fell in a 
 huge, unconfined mass, full of light, upon 
 her snow-pale face. One might have said 
 that heaven s penman had spilt some ink 
 on the pale book of death. 
 
 Not quite eighteen, with the features 
 which looked like the composite photo 
 graph of poet s dreams in short, nature s 
 aristocrat! Many (and surely Hosoi was 
 one of them) who had seen this refined 
 
38 1ROKA: 
 
 bloom on the coarse stalk of a tradesman s 
 family, had felt as if they had found a 
 chaste lily where they had looked for 
 a tadpole. 
 
 It is true that time and again faint 
 groans escaped her as the rope tightened; 
 her features twisted also. But her stoi 
 cism was Buddha-like. 
 
 " You filthy beast, you! Will you con 
 sent yes or no ? " cried her mother, more 
 furious than ever. " Will you yes or no ? 
 Answer! Why don t you answer me? 
 You unclean thing! " 
 
 The crank turned with a fearful sound, 
 like that of the smashing of bones. 
 
 The plan which Yone s mother pro 
 posed, and for the execution of which she 
 demanded the girl s consent, was this: 
 
 Yone should keep the appointment on 
 that very night; allure her lover to the 
 very verge of the cliff where there was a 
 stool-like rock, and, in the midst of her 
 love-making, step behind him and lean on 
 his shoulders a common attitude with 
 the Japanese lovers and then suddenly 
 push him violently down into the abyss. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 39 
 
 All of a sudden, the girl who had been 
 so stoical and stone-like, gave way. 
 
 She consented. 
 
 On the following conditions: 
 
 That she should be allowed to leave her 
 lover on the verge of the precipice or make 
 him walk to it himself; and that her 
 mother, instead of herself, should push 
 the young man over. 
 
 It was her mother, she argued, who 
 should take revenge on the offspring of 
 the murderer of her grandsire. Was it 
 not cruel enough punishment for Yone to 
 witness the fearful death of her lover? 
 
 It was agreed that Yone should make 
 her lover walk to the edge of the rock 
 under the pretext of spying a boat, and 
 then her mother should step out softly 
 from her hiding place in a little cove close 
 to the verge and dash him down the chasm. 
 
40 1ROKA: 
 
 IX 
 
 The moon was red, and, like a ripe fruit, 
 was falling into the silver plate of the sea. 
 Hosoi watched it from the shore, by the 
 cove. He was dreaming sweetly, just like 
 the moonlit sea at his feet; but his feelings 
 were full of strange, restless thrills, just 
 like the sea. 
 
 He did not wait there very long that 
 night. 
 
 "Arftnotki!" with which Yone threw 
 herself at his feet and clung to his sleeves. 
 
 No passionate embraces were exchanged 
 for the hand of culture is very strong in 
 Japan even upon the fever heat of love. 
 
 " Listen, Yone; to-morrow at the usual 
 hour . . . will that suit you? I have 
 arranged everything with my old nurse. 
 We will be married at her house/ 
 
 " Oh, but " 
 
 " Now, Yone, you have promised me 
 never to use that expression." 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 41 
 
 "But what will become of you you, 
 a samurai, and marry a daughter of a 
 chonin! Think of the anger of your 
 father; your mother would die of tears! " 
 
 " Oh, you have been telling me that for 
 these three months! " 
 
 Of course Hosoi was immovable. 
 
 The plan which he proposed, and which 
 at last, after many long protests, she 
 accepted, was this: 
 
 They would be married the following 
 night. And then, immediately after the 
 ceremony, they would leave the town and 
 find a little cozy corner in a mountain 
 village far away what a dream of a 
 happy cottage home that would be for 
 them! 
 
 " I will gather all the wild flowers you 
 want, Yone. Ah! how I will enjoy 
 chopping wood for our own hearth! " 
 laughed Hosoi. 
 
 Their future, to him, was a perfect 
 pastoral. 
 
 Then the girl sobbed. 
 
 Had Hosoi known how heroically she 
 had forced back those sobs! He could 
 
42 IROKA: 
 
 hardly believe his own ears. He took the 
 drooping face of the girl in his hands. 
 
 "What, tears!" 
 
 But he could not imagine the cause of 
 it, unhappy Hosoi. 
 
 Silencing his questions, Yone said to 
 him: 
 
 " This is our last night at this dear 
 place, our tryst. And then, too, I am too 
 happy. I can t contain myself. You see 
 I have resisted my weakness for some time. 
 I could not stand the idea that I was to 
 degrade you. But I feel that I can resist 
 it no longer forgive me, will you not? I 
 am ready to do a very great penance for 
 this. Oh, I am too happy: too much bliss 
 gives me tears! " 
 
 And Hosoi, as is so often the case with 
 lovers supreme egoists that they are! 
 allowed himself to be deceived. 
 
 " Let us have the sweetest time here to 
 night, for we may not come back to this 
 place again. Come ! " she said, and 
 through the dusk looked up to his face. 
 
 And the stars fell into her tears. 
 
 " "Will you do me one sweet deed? " 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 43 
 
 "What is that, Tone?" 
 
 " Call me your own wife just once." 
 
 " My wife ? Why, my darling, precious 
 wife! My own! " 
 
 " That is the sweetest thing I have ever 
 heard! " she murmured softly, dreamily, 
 as if to herself. Some more tears came 
 into her eyes. 
 
 The hours so sweet for Hosoi; very sad 
 for Tone flew like wings. 
 
 " Will you condescend to do me another 
 favour to-night?" 
 
 " If you but speak, Yone, you may be 
 sure that your lover hears a command of 
 a queen/ 
 
 " Condescend, then, to lend me your 
 sword, Hosoi-san just one of them." 
 
 " My sword? What do you mean, Yone? 
 My sword?" 
 
 "Yes, your Jiaori (over garment) and 
 mask also." 
 
 " Why, of course ! But tell me first, will 
 you not, what use you may find for them? 
 Forgive me for saying so, but there is 
 something strange in your ways to-night. 
 I can t help but notice it." 
 
44 IROKA: 
 
 She laughed a merry little laugh that 
 was her only reply. One may say of it, 
 " What a superhuman heroism! " But 
 really that is no word for it. And yet, 
 you hear a man say that woman is a 
 coward. 
 
 After a little while, seeing that her 
 lover was not quite satisfied, she reassured 
 him: 
 
 " Oh, nothing nothing specially! " 
 with that brave mastery over herself which 
 duped Hosoi completely. "You see, the 
 moon has gone and the roads are dark to 
 night. If one should see that I am a 
 samurai, I certainly would be safer, don t 
 you think?" 
 
 " Allow me to accompany you then." 
 
 " Oh, no! If ever we were to be found 
 together! " 
 
 But " 
 
 " Ah! kochino hito, did you not swear on 
 that very sword of yours that you would 
 never deny anything to me ? And now, at 
 the very first thing I have ever asked of 
 you " 
 
 For a samurai to part with his sword, 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 45 
 
 that certainly was an extraordinary thing. 
 But was he not ready to die for her any 
 time, and just to satisfy her whims even? 
 And, after all, is Love ever so happy as 
 when he is called upon to do some heroic 
 sacrifice ? 
 
 He consented. 
 
 Then she urged him to return ahead of 
 her that night. She wanted to pray to 
 the god of the sea by herself, after he was 
 gone. All appeared reasonable to Hosoi. 
 
 Then the farewell. 
 
 Her eyes, half closing in transport, as if 
 she were for an instant peeping into 
 heaven, in spite of the bitter tears which 
 moistened them; and that smile of hers 
 that stole over her face the face which 
 was feeling the last caress of Hosoi s eyes 
 on this earth. 
 
 They say that an atom of pleasure 
 snatched from the very chaos of pain, like 
 a drop of cold water on the lips of the 
 burning, is the most exquisite. And the 
 most exquisite pleasure was hers, poor girl! 
 
 As for Hosoi, who was as utterly igno 
 rant of the situation as the rock by his side, 
 
46 1ROKA: 
 
 he laughed inwardly at the stupidity of the 
 Chinese emperor who had hunted pleasure 
 through the forest of flesh., over the lake 
 of wine, and through the scented boudoirs 
 of three thousand women. 
 
 " Augustly return home, safely! " said 
 the girl. 
 
 The young man hesitated a moment, 
 without knowing just why. Yone was at 
 his feet once more. 
 
 There was something in the expression 
 of the girl which was more than enough 
 to make the reputation of the most am 
 bitious artist. 
 
 The ghost-like sea fog dropped a cur 
 tain between them. 
 
 She confined her huge mass of hair into 
 his mask, and donned his haori. She 
 threw away her enormous obi (girdle) and 
 gathered her dress with her under sash. 
 She thrust into this the sword to die with 
 the " soul " of her beloved at her side! It 
 gave her colourless lips their last smile. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 47 
 
 Then she rose. 
 
 But she fell again upon the sands where 
 her lover had sat,, and caressed the spot. 
 And, as if she were struck with a bright 
 idea all of a sudden, she took off the mask 
 and let down her hair and gathered it with 
 her left hand over her nape. Then she 
 unsheathed the sword with her right and 
 drew the razor-like sheen through the dark 
 mass, like a nun shaving her head when 
 she renounces the world. She dug a little 
 grave in the sandy spot which she had 
 caressed with her bosom. In it she buried 
 her hair. 
 
 Freely, this time, for there was none by 
 her side from whom she should conceal her 
 emotions, she watered the grave with her 
 silent tears. In order that, perhaps, the 
 seed which she had buried might spring 
 up, flower, and bear fruit in a kinder day 
 in the garden of her lover s memory 
 land. 
 
 Failing to find her at his nurse s house, 
 Yone was sure that Hosoi would come 
 
 there the very next night and " If 
 
 he would wait for me in vain, and in my 
 
48 1ROKA: 
 
 stead find my hair; if he would hear in the 
 tiding of winds of my death (she thought) ? 
 If he would come to me to join me, woulcl 
 I not welcome him, oh, with what out 
 bursts of joy! And will I not make him 
 happy in that shadow-entangling world, 
 as in this?" 
 
 Nevertheless, with that transcendental 
 logic of women: 
 
 "May he live long and happily," was 
 her last prayer. 
 
 Again she wept over that sacred spot 
 wherein she had buried the glory of her 
 youth. 
 
 She covered her head in the mask 
 again and wandered out of the cove, al 
 most lifeless, all in a dream. She climbed 
 the steep slant of the rocky ledge stoop- 
 ingly, with her hand on the hilt of the 
 sword, so that the end of the scabbard 
 might protrude from under the over 
 garment and attract her mother s atten 
 tion. 
 
 As soon as she reached the top of the 
 ledge she made as long strides as she 
 could. Happily, her height was not much 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 49 
 
 lower than her lover s, and the stool- 
 shaped rock was within a few paces. She 
 sunk down upon it. She stared into the 
 abyss below. 
 
 A moment. 
 
 And she was knocked from behind with 
 such violence that she was robbed of her 
 breath. 
 
 She heard the blood-curdling shriek 
 above her head: 
 
 " My family s foe; my daughter s temp 
 ter! " 
 
 How completely was the mother re 
 venged! on the verge of the cliff, smiling 
 hideously over the abysmal grave of that 
 shameless wretch, Hosoi Shizuma as she 
 thought. 
 
 Before the echoes of her voice woke 
 from the rocky walls there came to her, 
 mingled with the thunders of the waves 
 storming the reefs below, accompanied 
 with the groans, laughters, and melodies of 
 the mysterious, a voice a human voice 
 a woman s voice! 
 
 It said: " Farewell, mother! Fare 
 well! " 
 
 4 
 
50 IROKA: 
 
 Her own daughter s voice! 
 
 She reeled. 
 
 Burning from the fire of her emotion 
 and freezing from the ice of dread, almost 
 at the same time; there she was, the 
 mother ! What an awful pendulum, 
 swinging over the verge of insanity with 
 heaven and earth in huge eruption before 
 her eyes! 
 
 All at once a sweet, strange thought 
 came to the stricken mother as it does 
 so often to a person in a spout of emotional 
 excitement. 
 
 The demon of the cliff was playing a 
 trick on her! So she turned to the cove, 
 where she was sure that her daughter 
 was weeping over the sad fate of her 
 lover. 
 
 She called: "Tone! Oh, Yone-ya, 
 Yone-ya, Yone! " 
 
 From dim corners somewhere came back 
 to her the reply: 
 
 "Yone-ya! Oh, Yone-ya ya! Yone! 
 Yone ne ne! " 
 
 Echoes mocked her. 
 
 Suddenly her arms shot up, and as sud- 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 51 
 
 denly they came to a halt in mid air. 
 Then not only her arms, but her whole 
 body sunk as in a process of putrefaction. 
 
 Once more cruel things, these resur 
 rections with the certainty of death at the 
 end of them! 
 
 She flew down the steep slant into the 
 sheltered cove but an hour ago Love s 
 sweetest bower! 
 
 "My daughter must have fainted 
 there/ she thought. 
 
 She forgot her atrocious act at the verge 
 of the cliff, and with it the sweetness of 
 revenge, tasted but for the fraction of a 
 second, and that tragic cry, " Farewell, 
 mother!" she forgot all, the hapless 
 woman. 
 
 She was there in the empty cove; felt 
 every corner and nook of it with her out 
 stretched arms, like a miser after a lost 
 coin in a lightless closet. 
 
 And when, at last, the recollection of 
 what she had done, seen, heard, there by 
 the cliff, rushed back into her head 
 
 She was found senseless and was taken 
 
52 IROKA: TALES OF JAPAN 
 
 home. She was restored, but neither to 
 her home nor to the world, but to the 
 bosom of the Buddhist temple and to the 
 hell of remorse. 
 
A Samurai Girl 
 
A Samurai Girl 
 
 She is not a rose of May now -that is 
 very certain. She was, ten years ago,, its 
 envy this, I swear, is also very true. 
 
 From the servant quarters, a remark like 
 the following used to reach me rather too 
 often : 
 
 " Domo, dreadfully evil of looks! " 
 
 I knew of whom they were talking, and 
 the reason why I did not burn the whole 
 race of the evil-tongued maids off the face 
 of the globe was simply because she did 
 
 NOTE. A "samurai," it may be permitted to ex 
 plain, is a member of the highest of the four castes 
 that existed in feudal times in Japan. He was per 
 mitted to wear two swords. The membership of 
 this haughty and aristocratic class was based on 
 heredity or some distinguished military glory. 
 They never laboured, and found their pleasure in 
 fencing and military practices. The caste-lines 
 are now abolished legally, but the samurai natu 
 rally cling to their traditions with pride. 
 
56 1ROKA: 
 
 not wish it. However, her neighbours 
 and some of those who call themselves the 
 friends of the family would hesitate but 
 very little to give you information of a 
 very much darker hue about her. 
 
 For example: 
 
 " Crooked of nature obstinate as a 
 chestnut burr in short, a she-om / " 
 
 " She can t marry now, but why didn t 
 she ? What a sacrilege to have trifled with 
 the devotions of so many noble hearts as 
 she did! No wonder she is ugly now 
 the punishment of the gods! " 
 
 " I wonder if she thinks herself still too 
 good for a prince, poor girl! " 
 
 This last was often said by the kinder 
 hearted of her friends. 
 
 As a matter of fact a prince did ask for 
 her hand. 
 
 And, although she did not know it (per 
 haps she might have suspected), it was she 
 not a 12.2 centimetre shell from a Chi 
 nese cannon who sent him seeking a sad 
 requiem in the sighs of the seaweeds at 
 the bottom of the Wei-hai-wei Bay. 
 
 My sister for the subject of the sketch 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 57 
 
 is no other than she ever impressed me as 
 a singular person. We lived in a house, 
 strange to the eyes of the time, an old- 
 style mansion, out of which some three 
 generations had passed with no promise 
 of ever returning to it; a mansion heavy 
 with the odour of Feudalism (now gone, 
 leaving behind it, like a forgiving lover, 
 all its heroism and poetry), and such a 
 one that when one stands before it, he is 
 tempted to say: " Here, now, I have found 
 the graveyard of History! " And my sis 
 ter seemed to be the genius of the mauso 
 leum of the past. We saw our sister very 
 rarely in those days. I, for one, did not 
 know where she was keeping herself or 
 what occupied her hours. When she did 
 come to us, she seemed as silent and as 
 far away as the quaint architecture of 
 that samurai mansion. 
 
 The palace of Kameyama is empty now, 
 for the prince had left it a quarter of a 
 century ago for Tokio. On the wall of 
 the alcove of the throne room, there is a, 
 kakemono. On it you can see an orchid 
 in bloom, clinging to a rocky precipice 
 
58 IROKA: 
 
 over a dark abyss a piece of needle 
 work. 
 
 This orchid bloom,, like an unexpected 
 touch of an angel, or a sudden burst of 
 your dead mother s memory, or any other 
 sacred thing, never seems to fail to send a 
 thrill through you whenever you look at 
 it. One evening I was standing on the 
 beach of Kobe and saw an arm of a girl 
 quiver in the gloaming, as she stretched 
 it after her lover, who was just going to 
 sail to Hawaii. The artless grace which 
 passion gave to that arm made me think 
 of the orchid bloom from my sister s 
 needle. A look, even a careless look, will 
 be enough to tell you that the bloom is 
 stretching out its head for something 
 for sunshine, perhaps; for something else, 
 more likely. 
 
 Every one who saw the work took care to 
 ask the name of the artist. And they re 
 membered it after they had forgotten some 
 of the names of their personal friends. 
 
 You know the time was in Japan now 
 it is all gone when a commercial spirit 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 59 
 
 in any form whatever was looked upon as 
 degrading. The samurai would have died 
 first before he would do anything for pay; 
 everything he did came straight out of 
 his heart or from some sense of duty. He 
 who sold his art work, whether it be of pen, 
 brush, chisel, or needle, was thought crim 
 inal, and nothing was so galling to the sen 
 sitive nature of an artist as the traffic in 
 the fruits of the garden of his art-dreams. 
 There were thousands of men who 
 bought and sold in those days, but they 
 were merchants; and they were classed, in 
 the contempt of public esteem, just above 
 the eta at the very bottom of our social 
 ladder. 
 
 There was a suit of armour in our fam 
 ily. In it, three centuries ago, one of our 
 ancestors persuaded History to print his 
 name. That, therefore, was the greatest 
 treasure of our house. Too sacred for 
 exhibition, like the gods in the shrines, 
 we were allowed to look only at the out 
 side of the chest which contained it. 
 
 The yoroibitsu, or the armour chest, 
 
60 1ROKA: 
 
 used to stand on a tokonoma, and, as the 
 years came and went, we were taught to 
 pay our worshipful respect to it on the 
 new year s day. 
 
 In my youthful days, when I used to 
 have new wine instead of blood in my 
 veins, the desire of my heart was to have a 
 peep at the armour which was in the chest. 
 
 One morning I missed the chest from 
 the tokonoma. Where could it have pos 
 sibly gone? When I found it standing in 
 a corner of my sister s room, I said to her: 
 
 " Our ancestor s armour, is it in that 
 chest, sister?" 
 
 " Oh, yes! 
 
 " Condescend to show it to me." 
 
 " The key is lost." 
 
 And that was all she said. 
 
 She was the eldest sister, and beside her 
 I had two more. They were all married 
 and happy, looking into the heaven-made 
 photographs of their own youth in the 
 faces of their children. 
 
 She used to correct my poems, this eld 
 est sister of mine. And one moonlight 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 6 1 
 
 night,, when I was thinking a thing or two 
 which I do not care to make public, and as 
 I could not tempt sleep inside the curtain 
 of my closed eyelids, I went to my ink- 
 stone. With the black-traced fancy of 
 mine, I rushed into my sister s room to 
 surprise her. I did surprise her with a 
 vengeance. 
 
 She started, wild-eyed, fawnlike. And 
 crash! down came the lid of the armour 
 chest. 
 
 " So, you found the key! " 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 A few days later she took to her bed. 
 She became very ill. The physicians gave 
 her up. One night, when I was sitting up 
 with her, she asked me: 
 
 "Am I dying? What say the physi 
 cians? " 
 
 I told her an untruth, as a matter of 
 course. She smiled and said to me, in a 
 tone that sounded as if she were very sorry 
 for me: 
 
 "Oh, I well know ... to death 
 fated! " 
 
 Then she fixed her eyes upon me light- 
 
62 1ROKA: 
 
 less, tired, faded now, but which (as any 
 of her idolaters of a happier yesterday of 
 her bloom could have testified) used to in 
 voke the gods, make toys of human souls; 
 the eyes which could apotheosize or cru 
 cify a man at will. Then slowly turning 
 her gaze toward the armour chest, she said: 
 
 " Brother, the chest is open/ 
 
 As I rose to examine the contents of the 
 chest, after that permission from her, she 
 buried her face in the futon of her bed. 
 
 Happily or unhappily, I don t know 
 which she did not die. But the contents 
 of the armour chest I had seen already. 
 She could not wash my memory clean of 
 the impressions which they had made. 
 
 Nothing very extraordinary, the con 
 tents of the chest. 
 
 A pile of papers, that was all. They 
 were a heap of receipts from a Kioto 
 merchant, a dealer in embroidered goods. 
 I glanced at them one by one carefully 
 as if I were looking over my death sen 
 tence which was indistinctly written. At 
 the very bottom of the pile I came to one. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 63 
 
 It was a receipt for a suit of armour, and 
 for the first time I saw where the ancient 
 treasure of the family had gone. 
 
 Then it was true ... I stared at 
 nothing in particular, meaning to stare at 
 the gods . . . Was it true, then, that 
 in order that she might hold for a while, 
 at least, our family from the jaws of starva 
 tion and poverty, in order that she might 
 at least marry her younger sisters happily; 
 in order that gossip may not grow fat on 
 our family name; she, martyr-like . . . 
 Oh, ye gods! 
 
 So then the chest was not the shrine of 
 the ancient glory, but was the grave of her 
 beauty, her youth, her happy days! 
 
 When I turned to her, blood shooting 
 into my eyes in tongues of fire, she said 
 faintly: 
 
 " I am going . . . and hereafter, 
 you! . . . Brother, do you under 
 stand?" 
 
 I understood. But why did she not tell 
 me of it before? 
 
 She told me, as I have said, that the key 
 to the yoroibitsu was lost. 
 
64 IROKA: TALES OF JAPAN 
 
 And I, who looked at the ravage which 
 overwork wrought on her gentle frame; I, 
 who could see what it had robbed her of, 
 my once beautiful sister; have I not a 
 ground to wonder if it were the key of life 
 not of the armour chest that she 
 meant? 
 
A Japanese Garden 
 
A Japanese Garden 
 
 Iriaino Kane -from a bell tower sent 
 a shower of silver melody across the even 
 tide. Dusk flew out of the skirts of the 
 weeping willows. The mist-veiled cedar 
 groves, the bamboo back doors of the 
 shoya s (burgomaster s) house, and the 
 love dream of cherry blossoms were alto 
 gether enough to make the figures of a 
 mathematician spell out a poem. 
 
 Cottages with thatched caps had more 
 kinf oiks at Kameyama than any other type 
 of architecture. But this story is con 
 cerned with just one of them. Age and 
 rain had made quite an impression on the 
 wheat-straw roof of the cottage, but mosses 
 patched it over with velvet. The pillars 
 were very far from being steady, but the 
 worms must have thought it quite fashion 
 able to make their summer homes therein. 
 
68 1ROKA: 
 
 A thread of pale thin smoke a stream of 
 curled pathos issued from its square 
 opening, at once a chimney and a window. 
 One side of the cottage was screened off 
 with shoji. Age had painted it, so that 
 Imagination could come along and colour 
 it with either a ruddy claret or an ashy 
 coffee tint as she might choose; and some 
 thing over and above mere age seemed to 
 have treated it with a certain unkindness 
 and made it yawn at places. " Ears in the 
 wall/ is an old Japanese saying. The pro 
 verb might have added, " A shoji is many 
 mouthed/ From those mouths a voice 
 stole out. It was rather sweet, not lack 
 ing in the persuasive ring a gift of a 
 short yet uneventful life, let us say. The 
 voice said: 
 
 " Don t! Dearest, don t look that way. 
 Don t you see how happy I am? " 
 
 And what sceptic could doubt that smile 
 of hers? 
 
 "What s the matter, dear? Look 
 straight at me. . . . Now tell me, hus 
 band, what makes you think that I care 
 anything about my old home, mother, or 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 69 
 
 the pretty things? Look here, dearest" 
 (he who peeped into the miserable room 
 just then could have seen a dear tableau), 
 " haven t I got you ? Poor ? Nonsense ! " 
 
 And the smile with which she punctu 
 ated her sentence! Upon such, a man 
 looks, and farewell freedom! a slave 
 straightway and forever more. 
 
 " I am a cursed fool," said the man, and 
 followed it with something far stronger. 
 He was silent up to that time, and his eyes 
 were fixed on why, all sinners look in the 
 same direction, you understand. 
 
 A silence. 
 
 "But I can t understand it," he went 
 on. 
 
 Beneath his crossed arms his breast rose 
 and fell; not to calm music, however. The 
 keen intensity of his gaze was piercing, 
 and none would hesitate to say that it 
 could penetrate through miles of night. 
 But where or what was he looking at 
 could any one say? 
 
 Then he told his wife his life-story not 
 the first time, of course how he had 
 dreamed of an ideal garden; how he had 
 
70 1ROKA: 
 
 been trained since ten years of age, under 
 Shyungaku, Kosetsu, Meisei, and others; 
 how he had learned to dwarf trees and 
 " hang hypocrisy over bahy cascades " (as 
 he called it); how he had fled into the 
 mountain because he was tired of such 
 tricks; how he had met a hermit there; 
 and how the prophet of the mountain had 
 wedded him to Nature. Then he, with a 
 deal of emphasis, told her how he had met 
 her by the cascade over the Kasuga shrine; 
 how she had caused him to fall and break 
 the vow which he had made to the hermit 
 never to love aught but Nature; how he 
 was proud of his fall as all the foolish 
 would have said. He concluded: 
 
 "The garden is idealised here, within 
 me the rocks, streams, plants, and site; 
 and it shall be realised. Look here, wife, 
 as long as genius hides in this breast and 
 my heart is not ashes, the day must come 
 yes, it must. On that day my ancestors 
 may smile on me. And my posterity may 
 bless me for fortune and a name." 
 
 The woman listened to this discourse, 
 and looked in much the same way as flow- 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 71 
 
 ers do when the sun is jovial and the morn 
 ing sky a great big open smile. Then she 
 turned her beaming face full upon Kojiro. 
 "And if you succeed, will you forsake 
 me ? " she said. Taking her in his arms, 
 he said, " What, forsake this witch ? That 
 can never be." 
 
 The slow undulations of a distant bell 
 went around the low eaves of the cottage, 
 and the sleepy moon reposed quietly on 
 the graceful branch of the kikyo tree in 
 the yard. 
 
 Kojiro came home in the evening, as 
 was his wont, threw out a handful of cop 
 per coins, and said that that was all he 
 could make that day, and, " Here goes an 
 other day! " His little wife caressed him 
 tenderly and encouraged him. But, poor 
 thing! she herself had enough to do to dry 
 her own tears. Surely they were at the 
 very bottom of misfortune. Why does not 
 the waned moon wax? But the fact is, 
 Fortune is seldom hitched to the heel of 
 catastrophe. She is a little too proud, 
 moreover, to sell her smiles to court Sor- 
 
72 1ROKA: 
 
 row. Kojiro sat down like a millstone. 
 Heaven help him! his heart was heavy. 
 He did not care a whit for himself 
 six years of hermit life had served him 
 well but for that delicate bud, his 
 wife! 
 
 Osono sat at the opposite side of the 
 hibacTii from her husband. The wreaths 
 of steam rose from the kettle the only 
 light-hearted thing in the whole room. 
 Osono watched them. " How well they 
 caricature our poverty coming out and 
 vanishing away," thought she. Kojiro 
 was a stone image all the while; solemn 
 and everybody knows nothing is so much 
 out of place as solemnity in a rural cot 
 tage. 
 
 Over across the green meadow they saw 
 the elder of the village, the venerable 
 shoya, coming. The snow of sixty winters 
 weighed his frame and made a walking 
 picture of humility out of him. His hands 
 were clasped behind him, and he was 
 guided and followed, almost at the same 
 time, by his fat, white dog. Osono saw 
 him coming, rose from her seat with alac- 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 73 
 
 rity, and covered the simple supper with 
 what seemed like a piece of linen. She 
 went to the closet, took out a cushion, and, 
 spreading it on the floor, awaited the ap 
 proaching elder with the best holiday 
 apparel at her command her sunniest 
 smiles. After the tremendous showers of 
 polite Japanese bows, " hais " and " heis," 
 the slwya stated in his official manner the 
 mission that brought him there, and, after 
 exchanging compliments in the most ex 
 travagant style, according to the fashion 
 of the day, left the house with a slight 
 frown upon his wrinkled brow, followed 
 by his faithful dog. The wife raised her 
 eyes with a tremour on her lips. Her gaze 
 met that of her husband. 
 
 " I can t understand this," said he, 
 quietly. 
 
 The following morning the sun found 
 the gardener dressed in his cleanest gar 
 ments. The shoya came for him, and they 
 started together toward the capital of the 
 empire. 
 
 That which the shoya brought to their 
 
74 1ROKA: 
 
 humble house the day before was a sum 
 mons from the Lord Chancellor of the 
 palace. 
 
 Fifty miles of rocks, dust, and moun 
 tain! At best a serious undertaking in 
 those days, and what was left of Kojiro 
 came, as the twilight was feeling her way, 
 staggering back tipsy-fashion, under pines 
 and cedars. Fatigued and somewhat pale, 
 Osono was prepared for all this, but there 
 was something more in Kojiro s expres 
 sion. And when she asked him what sad 
 dened him so, Kojiro took out two pack 
 ages of gold, and said that they were the 
 very worms that were gnawing his marrow. 
 She snatched the packages off the ground 
 and said: "What do you mean, my dear 
 husband? What, the money! What a 
 timely shower! Does this trouble you? 
 But, my husband, where did you get it? " 
 
 The gardener folded his wife in his 
 arms. And the tenderness ah, don t tell 
 me that man is a brute! Many failings in 
 his heart, doubtless, but a big slice of hea 
 ven also. He answered the awe-stricken, 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 75 
 
 question-pregnant eyes of his pretty young 
 wife: 
 
 " Be patient, Sono, and listen to me. 
 We reached the palace, and as we pros 
 trated ourselves the Lord Chancellor en 
 tered, a middle-aged man., kindly of face 
 and fine-voiced. He asked me if I were 
 the peerless gardener of the empire by the 
 name of Kojiro. Fear made me speechless, 
 and yet somehow I answered that while my 
 name was indeed Kojiro, I was a mere 
 plantsman and very far from being any 
 thing like a superior gardener, and that it 
 must have been through a great mistake 
 that I had been thus summoned to the 
 palace of the Mikado. To which he kindly 
 answered that I need not be over-modest; 
 that his majesty had already learned of my 
 genius. Winds that blow are not all un 
 kindly, my garden-maker/ he said. The 
 emperor was quite displeased, so he told 
 me, to find that turnips and radishes 
 had claimed a genius of such rare order 
 so long; and that the time of my appear 
 ance was ripe, but not too late. The pal 
 ace had looked upon an uncompleted gar- 
 
76 1ROKA: 
 
 den on the south side for three genera 
 tions. The resources of three mountains, 
 plants, from wheresoever they grow; the 
 force of a thousand select masons and gar 
 deners, and the royal treasury are all at 
 your command. The reward will be ac 
 cording to the merit of your work. No 
 genius ever lacked rank or wealth in the 
 palace of the emperor. As an immediate 
 relief, accept these packages with my com 
 pliments! Then he turned to the shoya 
 and ordered him to bring me to the palace 
 on the first of the next month. With that 
 we were dismissed straightway." 
 
 Osono s eyes, her lips, her cheeks, they 
 were as clear as the bubbles of a sunlit rill. 
 The little speech of Kojiro was a knell to 
 him; but to her a gospel. She stormed, 
 and charmingly; in this, man never can 
 hope to imitate woman. To suspend her 
 over that most awful of chasms, anxiety, 
 and scare the life out of her in such a 
 merciless way why, cruelty is no word for 
 it! Her peroration was telling; she would 
 nevermore love him, she said, if he were 
 to behave as wretchedly as he had done 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 77 
 
 again (the use of the threat, let me state 
 by way of comment, is becoming, since the 
 day of Kojiro, as common among the Jap 
 anese women as human nature), and it left 
 him as utterly helpless as a butterfly drunk 
 with the dreams of flowers. 
 
 If the flickering pith-wick of the seed- 
 oil lamp had an ear, there is no telling how 
 many secrets it might have heard that 
 night. With what judicious scrutiny 
 Osono close questioned Kojiro about the 
 tear (for an unfortunate drop became over- 
 emotional and dewed the cheek of Kojiro). 
 But, poor Kojiro! the way he abused him 
 self was sinful. He cursed his doltishness, 
 the day of his birth, and many other 
 things without the slightest show of mercy, 
 but never to his satisfaction. He begged 
 his wife s pardon. It was a black lie, so 
 he confessed; all that he had told her that 
 night was a cursed falsehood, not a bit of 
 truth in the whole thing. Oh, of course, 
 what he had said of the little training he 
 had received was true, but he was a com 
 mon plantsman, nothing more. He had 
 
78 IROKA: 
 
 told her those things just to lighten the 
 despair-plagued heart of his young wife, 
 and for no other end. The trouble came, 
 he frankly admitted, from his extravagant 
 and seriously criminal laudation of him 
 self, and now, as the matter had gone so far, 
 he wanted her to do what she pleased with 
 him. " Wife, for mercy s sake, fly from 
 me. Leave this wretched rascal, leave me 
 and fly for your life; look here! " (Then 
 the strong man melted somehow, and 
 clasped his hands in the attitude of prayer; 
 his mother had taught him how to do that 
 when he was two years of age.) 
 
 And then his wife s answer! contradict 
 ing everything he had said, assuring him 
 that Kameyama was not the only place 
 that the sun shone upon. They could 
 escape the wrath of the Mikado as easily 
 as they had that of their parents, if he 
 had enough daring about him. 
 
 Woman, it is said of you that you 
 came to comfort man; is it to deceive him 
 also? 
 
 By the time that watchful lamp fainted 
 in the night, Kojiro was soothed as by 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 79 
 
 magic. Happy dreams and glorious visions 
 hugged him about. 
 
 Kioto is the historic capital of old 
 Japan. For her flowers and fair women 
 her name is famous, for her poets and 
 artists also. A quaint lover of the old 
 sepultured himself in one of the palace 
 archives, not many years ago. When he 
 came out he said that he had found a curi 
 ous document. Many scholars became in 
 terested in that old manuscript. But, as 
 it happens, this story is more interested in 
 it than any one of them. "My Life" is the 
 title of the volume. The name of the 
 author is also traceable with a little help 
 of the imagination. It reads " Kojiro." 
 The record is full of exclamation points 
 and very few periods. That is because 
 complete sentences are not many. Here 
 is a sample page: 
 
 " July 2, xiii. of Tempei. 
 
 " A violent knock awoke me. Osono! 
 I cried. I looked around. Osono was 
 gone and the gold with her. A man 
 
8o 1RQKA: 
 
 kicked open the door and came in; it was 
 the slioya. Only one path was open to me. 
 I leapt to the ground, seized a kama, and 
 attempted hara-kiri. In the name of the 
 state and of his majesty., the sJwya ordered 
 me to stop. My hands were palsied, blood 
 streamed from my eyes, every particle of 
 strength forsook me; in that bright morn 
 ing all was night with me. 
 
 " The shoya exclaimed at the top of his 
 voice, ( Look, look, look! Waking from 
 my stupefaction, I looked, and saw on the 
 paper shade of the lamp, thinly traced 
 with charcoal, the handwriting of my 
 wife, Good-by; I take this gold as the 
 price of all the sufferings you have caused 
 me since we ran away together. The in 
 scription was superfluous; I understood all 
 before I saw it. Sorrow, disgrace, soul- 
 sickening mortification, death! Ah, how 
 faint a shadow of the utterable real do 
 these words caricature! I prayed that I 
 might die; but there I was, after having 
 suffered ten thousand deaths already. No 
 place in which to live, no means to take 
 my life. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 8 1 
 
 " I had sinned; heavens, but thy pun 
 ishment! Do I justly deserve all this? " 
 
 The shoya took charge of Kojiro, im 
 prisoned him in his godown, and placed 
 three strong men at the door. The old 
 man was not meddlesome by nature; but 
 he appreciated the situation. Meanwhile 
 Kojiro sat in the dusk (for the guards had 
 persuaded the sun to be ashamed of this 
 wretch of a gardener). He was a perfect 
 interrogation point. He could not under 
 stand. Who was he? An insignificant 
 plantsman who had spun his life thread by 
 stealing the light of day. His wife had 
 thrown him away and kept her old shoes. 
 How came it that this man should be se 
 lected out of so many of his professional 
 brothers to wear the crown of royal recog 
 nition and bleed under the thorn of irony? 
 
 "Oh, can t you help me?" he cried, 
 knocking at his own breast. But his heart 
 stood still; then, affrighted, it bounded 
 with violent throbs. His head ached in 
 response to that appeal for help. Alas, 
 and alas! the tears that boiled in his swol- 
 6 
 
82 1ROKA: 
 
 len eyes helped little to enthrone genius 
 within a common hand. Oh, for that power 
 that calls forth immortality out of mortal 
 ity, a god out of man! What could be 
 done? Through whose lips could he send 
 in his resignation to this gracious call from 
 the sovereign? That body of his, scarce 
 five feet seven, was there no place in this 
 wide world to put it? Was Osono the rust 
 that ate up the steel of his manhood? She 
 was hateful, yes, but far more contempt 
 ible than she was he himself. Dark, dark! 
 But Eemorse felt that it might be made 
 still darker; so she flooded it with the ink 
 which some of the angels had used to write 
 a very black record. And the thought, 
 " Had I been true to my vows, faithful to 
 the hermit?" flashed lightning over his 
 purgatory and left it darker than ever. 
 " Here it is, my life. Take it, gods! 
 take it, Buddhas, and ye ghosts! I fling it 
 away willingly. No, you do not accept it, 
 this cursed black pollution! But, oh, pity 
 me, I cannot die. I cannot pray; you have 
 all forsaken me. Have I not suffered? 
 Am I not punished? " 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 83 
 
 The groan was dismal; but the tears of 
 blood which Eemorse strained from him, 
 and the crimson stream torn with his own 
 teeth from his lips, painted in a more sin 
 ister colour the hell within his soul. 
 
 For a couple of hours he was a ghastly 
 being, lying on the floor without the 
 slightest sign of life. But life wandered 
 back. It was always night in the godown, 
 so it did not make any difference whether 
 the day waxed or waned. But just at that 
 time the sun was dying outside, and crea 
 tion was falling asleep on the hill-tops. 
 Kojiro sat still till the temple bells tolled 
 out midnight; then it was that a voice 
 woke many a confidential echo from the 
 corners of the godown. Kojiro was think 
 ing in a whisper: 
 
 " Trying to murder myself because a 
 woman deceived me? and I call myself 
 a man? Die? Why not die in the effort 
 of realising the garden? Try try try! 
 My best, that s nothing, I know; the best 
 a man can do is not much. But but 
 but if indeed I realise the garden of my 
 
84 IROKA: 
 
 dreams, no one will think it a garden at 
 all. It may be monstrous, outrageously 
 common, in other eyes. No matter. 
 Surely some chisel must have cut the val 
 ley of Katsura gawa, the rocks of Atago 
 Mountain. True, they do not bear the 
 names of men. But man! why cannot he 
 walk in the footsteps of a god? Cannot 
 the finite ever leap the barrier? At least 
 I would find this out, yes, before I die! " 
 
 Something brought lightning to his 
 eyes. 
 
 With the morning came the slwya. He 
 unlocked the door and asked Ivojiro to 
 step into the kago standing ready outside. 
 They started, and at the end of their jour 
 ney the gates of Nara palace stood open- 
 armed. 
 
 One thousand picked workmen, when 
 they form a single machine controlled by 
 a single brain, work out a wonder. Ko- 
 jiro gathered many unnamable things. 
 " Great heavens! " was all the slwya could 
 say when he inspected them, and the Lord 
 Chancellor s " Kore wa shitari! " meant 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 85 
 
 the same thing. This done, the gardener 
 walled up the site so that no eyes could 
 peep in or look over; and as for the birds, 
 they tell no secrets. The thousand men 
 worked for about two months; then seven 
 hundred and twenty-three of the number 
 came out. No one knew why. And the 
 only thing they said was that they could 
 not take a certain oath. At the end of an 
 other month a hundred and fifty-one more 
 men were ejected. Fifty-three men be 
 sides Kojiro remained within the wall at 
 the close of the year. 
 
 The summer passed; the autumn grew 
 ruddy with ripe fruits, and dropped them. 
 And every morning the chorus of many 
 voices rose and echoed back and forth 
 among the stars nickering in the light of 
 dawn. Winter froze the playful graces of 
 the rills; her successor pitched her tent of 
 purple mists in the melting shades of 
 mountain woods and along the laughing 
 meadow streams; summer taught her 
 winged tribe the music not altogether of 
 earth; the moon hung pensive in the au 
 tumnal skies; and all these blended in one 
 
86 1RQKA: 
 
 circle, exemplifying Time s relation to its 
 mother, Eternity; and yet no thoughtful 
 bee ever freighted its wings with the least 
 bit of news from within the walls of the 
 industrial hermitage. The sky, too, was 
 very faithful, and no mirage ever loomed 
 up to satisfy the curious of earth. Not 
 even the Mikado was admitted. Three 
 years passed thus. Meanwhile all the 
 workmen came out, and Kojiro was left 
 the sole sovereign of his own realm. Three 
 and forty of his men had been carried out 
 to be placed under the sod and the stone. 
 
 The Lord Chancellor was in the habit 
 of riding round the palace in person. One 
 afternoon his advance guard arrested a 
 " singular thing " on the north side of the 
 walled garden. The " singular thing " 
 looked like a man, but more like a beast. 
 The attendant of the chancellor cried, 
 " Down! " as he led the thing into the 
 presence of his master. But it stood erect. 
 Its huge, heavy, tangled mass of hair mi 
 micked very successfully a monsoon in a 
 willow forest. The daring beard filled up 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 87 
 
 the holes and ditches in the face which 
 pain, anxiety, and intense excitement had 
 dug, and clothed the breast, otherwise 
 naked. A ghost of a garment clung to the 
 waist, like the picture of a faithful, tender 
 wife, maltreated, torn, soiled, despised. 
 The chancellor met the eyes of the savage 
 for full ten minutes and, " How now, 
 Kojiro?" 
 
 The man fell down upon his face. 
 
 His majesty was rather patient, for a 
 royal person, I mean. But when the Lord 
 Chancellor reported the completion of the 
 garden, his majesty made an impression 
 upon his minister. In after days, the 
 minister translated the impression into 
 words, " Just like a fox with his tail on 
 fire! 
 
 They placed the marble dais off the 
 south corridor of the palace. The dais 
 was partly within the wall of the garden, 
 crowning its terrace; technically speaking, 
 it was at the station-point of the perspec 
 tive. White and purple draped the open 
 ing in the wall. When the curtain parted, 
 
88 1ROKA: 
 
 Kojiro was seen prostrated upon the 
 marble step. A prolonged, vacant stare! 
 his majesty, open-mouthed, sprang a 
 step or two forward, his hands thrown be 
 hind him, his brow stormy. Wonder came 
 and wiped away all traces of culture, dig 
 nity, self-possession. And the most won 
 derful and the most unaccountable of all 
 was that the chancellor did not note any 
 change in the royal person. Kemember, 
 too, that never before had a smile or a 
 frown appeared or disappeared on the 
 emperor s face, unnoted by the minister. 
 And, what is more, the entire court ig 
 nored the extraordinary movements of its 
 master the court which never was known 
 to miss a single quiver of the royal lips, a 
 shade in the royal eyes. What was the 
 matter? One ample cause for all these 
 things the garden! 
 
 The rocks! as common a thing as earth 
 and water, why should they enslave the 
 eyes of the Son of Heaven? His majesty 
 (and the whole court, for that matter) 
 looked long at them. Did they really see 
 how Kojiro had embraced, caressed. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 89 
 
 warmed, wooed,, slept by and upon them 
 night after night, I wonder? As for the 
 rocks, they appeared natural, and unnatu 
 ral also. To ape Nature to perfection was 
 but a phase of Kojiro s ambition. The 
 perfect expression of Nature plus Kojiro 
 nothing more, nothing less, was the 
 ideal of the gardener. The result was 
 that the rocks fought; they frowned for 
 midable anathemas, tessellated patience, 
 preached faithfulness, prophesied eternity. 
 No flower, not even a tuft of ran, not one. 
 Streams encircled the garden, but they 
 seemed mad. They bit the rocks, and 
 their teeth flew like snow. Their laughter, 
 like the fingers of a fairy, went pecking 
 over the lute strings of the human heart. 
 They sobbed too, and the souls of the be 
 holders hugged that sorrow as a mother 
 presses her babe. And the dews that 
 beaded the eyelashes of the emperor were 
 his own heart made liquid. Dead trees 
 were not despised there; yes, there were 
 a number of them. Icho, ginnan, cedar, 
 pine, oak, hugged each other in shocking 
 promiscuousness. The gardener had failed 
 
90 IROKA: 
 
 to civilise their savage passions with a les 
 son in modesty; a patch of an African 
 jungle was the result. Yes,, it was that, 
 but it was also the condensed essence of 
 suggestion. A magic touch of perspec- 
 tography, and his majesty, the great Ten 
 Shi, was the fool of an illusion. The 
 garden hurled him into a cyclone of 
 dreams. His soul tripped over the paths 
 whereupon a mountain goat would never 
 risk his hoofs, and wandered lost amid the 
 steeps of the Kiso and the Ransan ranges. 
 
 At the royal feet was Kojiro, prostrated. 
 Slight tremours passed over him; but none 
 regarded him. 
 
 His majesty snatched the purple robe 
 from the hands of his retainers. That was 
 the first thing he did after waking from 
 his trance. 
 
 "Rise, Kojiro!" exclaimed the royal 
 voice. 
 
 No response. 
 
 " Rise; receive the favour of thy em 
 peror! " The royal hands held out the 
 robe of rank to the gardener, an unheard 
 of honour. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 91 
 
 But no response. 
 
 The chancellor lifted up the prostrate 
 man. The warmth of life was fast passing 
 from the frame of Kojiro into the marble 
 step. 
 
Aboard the " Akagi 
 
Aboard the " Akagi " 
 
 A Story of the Battle of the Yellow 
 Sea 
 
 Ordinarily, a man with an average por 
 tion of common sense, blessed with a fair 
 amount of healthy uncertainty in the mat 
 ters beyond the grave, and the sunny sun 
 above him, and a good digestion within 
 him, is not likely to court death as he 
 would his sweetheart. 
 But then- 
 There are occasions; there are differ 
 ences in the natures of men. 
 
 The " Akagi " was a baby of a Japanese 
 gunboat of 615 tonnage. The "lamest 
 duck " in the Chinese ranks was more than 
 twice her size. As for the two largest 
 
96 IROKA: 
 
 ironclads under the yellow dragon flags, 
 they were each 7,430 in tonnage. 
 
 Vice-Admiral Ito, the commander-in- 
 chief of the Japanese squadrons, was very 
 much of a mother in some things. And 
 his heart toward the " lame ducks " in his 
 fleet was womanly. And then, here is his 
 motto: 
 
 " Annihilate the Chinese without the 
 loss of one of your own! " 
 
 And his first care, in the plan of the 
 battle, was to tuck away under the wings 
 of the principal squadron, the " Akagi " 
 and also the " Saikyo Mam " a mer 
 chantman hastily created into an armed 
 transport, with four quick-firers. 
 
 So to the port of the squadron they 
 went. 
 
 On the port quarter of the " Akagi " 
 there stood two cadets. They were losing 
 their souls through their eyes. 
 
 " Zannen! What a tax on our love- 
 country-heart! " 
 
 "Jitsuni! In truth, it s past endur 
 ance! " 
 
 They looked on. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 97 
 
 " There look, look there! look yon 
 der! 
 
 Then a perfect weed-growth of gestures 
 sprouted. Also there was a stormy bil 
 lowing of their eyebrows, great craning of 
 their necks, rounding of eyes and mouths 
 as well an impatient sigh or two! 
 
 A moment. And very suddenly: " Ban 
 zai! Mhon Navy banzai! " 
 
 Just then the flying squadron was flank 
 ing the Chinese right wing. What a revela 
 tion for the gods they were, the starboard 
 broadsides of the vessels of the squadron 
 the " Yoshino," the Takachiho," the 
 " Akitsushima," the " Naniwa " ! It did, 
 in all truth, look as if some one had pulled 
 up Asama, Vesuvius, and a couple more by 
 the roots, had set them afloat on their sides, 
 so that their craters shot at the horizon 
 instead of the midday sun, and made them 
 fly at the rate of fourteen knots an hour. 
 
 " Look, look! " and the finger of a cadet 
 was pointed at the hapless " Yang- Wei," 
 the outermost vessel of the Chinese right. 
 And, to tell the truth for once in a narra 
 tive of excitement, such as war, there was 
 7 
 
98 IROKA: 
 
 a big enough load of smoke aboard her to 
 smother all the Klondike mosquitoes to 
 death. 
 
 She was on fire and doomed! 
 
 The cadets on board the " Akagi " were 
 by no means divine especially in the mat 
 ter of patience. They were ruled out of 
 the stage of action; and the sight before 
 their eyes was calculated to disturb the 
 coolness of a god. Unless you were there, 
 you could hardly know how much of pa 
 triotism and self-control is required to 
 behave correctly under such strain. 
 
 And yet, how unreasonable they were to 
 complain! 
 
 Whoever thought of such a thing as to 
 whip a mouse into a melee of elephants, if 
 one cared anything for the well-being of 
 the mouse? 
 
 II 
 
 A moment on a battlefield is a turn of a 
 kaleidoscope. And, as a matter of fact, 
 a few moments did bring a wonderful 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 99 
 
 change in the fortunes of the war on that 
 autumn day, especially as far as the " Ak- 
 agi " was concerned. 
 
 The faster vessels of the principal 
 squadron steamed ahead. And in the 
 spirited race they little remembered the 
 slower-footed brethren among them. 
 Naturally, they dragged behind. 
 
 The " Akagi " was the slowest as well as 
 the smallest. 
 
 And now she was exposed to the full 
 fury of the battle. It was as if Fortune 
 said to her: " Show us now what you can 
 do! " And the men aboard the " Akagi," 
 silent and intent at the guns, could not 
 help boiling all over with a wild paroxysm 
 of delight in their heart of hearts. 
 
 The pious would have said that it was 
 heaven s own hand that gave to her this 
 opportunity thrown, so to speak, right into 
 her lap. Did you ever know luck so 
 happy? The unexpectedness of it made 
 the exultation the keener. 
 
ioo IRQKA: 
 
 III 
 
 "Berabo! The sons of Yamato, right 
 ye are! Let the men of the land of Central 
 Bloom see what make of men the sun- 
 round flag waves over! Banzai! The 
 Hiyei banzai! " 
 
 The " Hiyei " had just ported her helm. 
 
 What does her commander mean? Does 
 he not know that it will throw his old 
 ship smash into the embrace of the huge 
 ironclads at the Chinese centre ? Well, he 
 knew that better than any other man, per 
 haps, since that was the very thing he 
 aimed to do. It will never do to say of 
 him: "There was method in his madness;" 
 because that action which scared very dar 
 ing into cowardice, was the result of a sys 
 tematic and cool judgment, and the keen 
 insight into the situation and the prompt 
 ness of action. That was the only way 
 daring as it was of saving the ship. If 
 he tried to follow in the wake of the prin 
 cipal squadron, he would be forced to re- 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 101 
 
 ceive the fire of the two ironclads, the 
 " Ting- Yuen/ the Chinese flagship, and 
 the " Chen- Yuen/ her sister vessel, and 
 also all of the Chinese right wing. And, 
 after all the risk, he was sure that he would 
 not be able to keep up with the rest of the 
 squadron because of the ship s slow speed. 
 He would pierce the hostile line, take the 
 short cut, and meet the principal squadron 
 on the other side! 
 
 " This was splendidly done! " comments 
 Philo McGiffin, an ex- American naval of 
 ficer and the commander of the " Chen- 
 Yuen." 
 
 The waters all about the " Hiyei " rose 
 in a thousand fountains and clapped their 
 hands and applauded her. And no won 
 der! History cannot give you too many 
 cases where an old-style ship of 2,200 ton 
 nage, with only three 17-centimetre and 
 six 15-centimetre Krupp guns, engaging 
 two ironclads of 7,430 tonnage each and 
 armed each with four 30J-centimetre 
 Krupp, two 15-centimetre, and twelve 
 machine guns. And that, too, at the 
 close range of 500 metres. 
 
102 1ROKA: 
 
 IV 
 
 They say " the sailor s heart is big 
 enough to love them all ! " Meaning by 
 " all/ the pretty women he meets. 
 
 There was a cadet to whom this did not 
 apply. 
 
 The imperial declaration of war was is 
 sued on the 1st of August, 1894. Four 
 months before that, when the war was a 
 certainty in the minds of a certain military 
 circle, although the exoteric commoners 
 but vaguely suspected it in a poesy- 
 embalmed corner of the old Capital of 
 Flowers call it Kioto, if you like in a 
 garden which one should never dare de 
 scribe in black and white, nor, indeed, in 
 any colours, there were two young people. 
 The moon was lighting them, and so also 
 the distant, star-like glimmer of lanterns 
 held up by the twilight-sleeved arms of 
 pine and cherry trees. 
 
 One of the young people was in the uni 
 form of a cadet and the other was a girl 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 103 
 
 beautiful enough, indeed, she was, even in 
 that all-obliterating night, to make the 
 moon turn pale with jealousy. 
 
 What were they doing? You know that. 
 What were they talking about? But how 
 can I tell? They were not in the shout 
 ing mood evidently, and the Japanese 
 sentiment abhors loudness of demonstra 
 tion. And then, too, the most of their 
 talking was done in perfect silence. I am 
 not speaking in riddles; all lovers under 
 stand me. 
 
 As Masamitsu rose to depart, he took her 
 hand. They could not see the expression 
 of each other s eyes, for the moon entered 
 into the dewdrops which their eyelashes 
 were piercing and spent all her glory in 
 turning them into gems and gave only 
 shadows to their eyes. But if the lips, the 
 eyes, the colour of their cheeks refused to 
 speak the unutterable in the hearts of the 
 lovers, why, something else must tell it. 
 
 And so their hands were together, their 
 fingers were woven more tenderly than 
 ever the tendrils of morning-glories. 
 
 A perfect silence! It might be because 
 
104 1ROKA: 
 
 he had too much to say she also, for the 
 matter of that. No, he could not say, 
 " Good-by! " 
 
 He moved a little, and she broke the 
 silence; 
 
 " Ar moshi; will you not be here to 
 morrow? At least a few days longer, I 
 pray you? " 
 
 How the western lovers would have 
 thrown themselves into each other s arms! 
 But the Japanese lovers are a cultured set. 
 
 Something scared sleep off Shizuka s 
 pillow that night. 
 
 One who saw a young man tottering 
 along the night-silenced streets, strangely 
 intoxicated with something more potent 
 than liquor, advertising himself to the 
 stars as a puppet of violent emotions, 
 might have looked upon his cadet uni 
 form and felt outraged. Whoever thought 
 of such a thing? a cadet of the Imperial 
 Japanese navy carrying himself so bone- 
 lessly, in such a jelly-fish fashion! 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 105 
 
 When the night had left Shizuka alone 
 with her thoughts and a troubled pillow, 
 the darkness and her God heard her say: 
 " What a sinner I am! What a miserable, 
 cowardly, accursed traitor! But, oh, how 
 can I how can I do it? Weak and 
 wicked? yes, I know that. Oh, help me, 
 help me, oh ye gods! " 
 
 A few drops gathered on her eyelashes; 
 they rolled silently down her cheeks, and 
 her pillow received them sadly enough. 
 
 What could be the matter with her? 
 
 Her mother, a few days ago, half jok 
 ingly, half seriously, had said to her: " If 
 Masamitsu were to fall in the battle? " 
 
 Triumph was in her eyes when she re 
 plied: "How joyously would I thank the 
 gods! " 
 
 She did not want to keep him back 
 that was not it. Oh no! She was the 
 daughter of a samurai. 
 
 The State before everything; loyalty, the 
 
106 1ROKA: 
 
 virtue of virtues; for Nihon s honour, for 
 the lustre of the Hino-Maru flag, all was 
 to be laid on the altar one s possession, 
 happiness, family, his children, his love, 
 his all! Such was the supreme code of 
 the Mhon Samurai. 
 
 Masamitsu was to go on the very next 
 day. And she said to him, " At least a 
 few days longer! " And well did she 
 know that he would be by her side on the 
 sinking of the sun that day. She had 
 tried to show him how heroically she could 
 bear everything for her country for him! 
 And she had seen that every effort of hers 
 made him softer, tenderer, more reluctant. 
 Would her image make a coward of him 
 when the cannons hailed each other and 
 the decks were painted red? Did she have 
 no more confidence in her lover? She 
 censured herself, and yet 
 
 There he was before her, becoming 
 under her very eyes more and more a lover 
 and less and less a patriot. What could 
 she do? Why not send him away at once? 
 But how could she be sure that he would 
 not leave his soul behind him with her; 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 107 
 
 and disgrace himself,, his family, his coun 
 try? Deaths! tens and thousands of them 
 rather than to see her lover blacken his 
 honour or soil the flag the flag dearer far 
 to her than her life, aye, than her father s, 
 mother s, her lover s life! 
 
 There was a plan in her mind as she 
 wept silently that night with the stars 
 which were watering her flowers outside 
 with their tears the flowers which he had 
 caressed. That plan, if she were brave 
 enough to carry it out, would settle the 
 whole thing right. She could not doubt 
 that. 
 
 "Yes, I will do it I will! May the 
 gods and Buddha help me! How cow 
 ardly I am, and what a base, weak 
 woman! " she murmured and wept. 
 
 The few days glided past like a dream. 
 And at last Masamitsu was there for the 
 final leave-taking. 
 
 His train was to leave very early the 
 next morning. 
 
 Shizuka rose and went to the tokonoma 
 a small alcove in a corner of the room, 
 furnished with a low platform whereupon 
 
108 1ROKA: 
 
 sacred things were kept, and which indi 
 cated the seat of honour. There were a 
 flower pot and a sword rack upon the plat 
 form. In the pot was a pet fuji (wistaria 
 chinensis) one of those miracles of 
 human care lavished upon a plant. The 
 entire city of Kioto knew of it, and the con 
 noisseurs valued it at many hundred yen. 
 On the rack was a sword, a couple of feet 
 in length, perhaps not that long. And 
 once upon a happier day of Nihon Samu 
 rai, a prince-swordsmith condensed his 
 long, toilsome life of thirty years into that 
 short compass. It was one of those mas 
 terpieces which have in it more of soul 
 than steel, a treasure handed down in 
 the family through generations, and 
 which is utterly beyond any valuation in 
 money. 
 
 Shizuka rose, beckoned her lover with 
 her eyes, and they approached the toko- 
 noma. 
 
 She took the sword off the rack. 
 
 " This is my humble parting gift to you, 
 if you would condescend to make me 
 happy by accepting it," she said. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 109 
 
 She drew it. They stood side by side 
 and looked at it, into the depth of its sheen. 
 It looked like a frozen piece of a deep, deep 
 heaven clear as the sea of Chinu, stain 
 less as Fuji-yama. Phantoms as ethereal 
 as the dreams of a god glided into it; 
 dragons, in its shimmering light, as 
 vivid as imagination, chased each other 
 up and down from the guard to the 
 point. 
 
 Shizuka pointed at the wistaria in the 
 pot. She said: 
 
 " Do you know how I love that flower? " 
 
 " I was told/ replied Masamitsu, " that 
 it is your very life." 
 
 " Truly so it is and " (cutting its stem in 
 two with the sword) " here it is take it. 
 It is for you! " 
 
 He was silent. His hand, stretched out 
 to receive it, was trembling; his head 
 bowed. 
 
 " Take the sword as well." 
 
 He took the bare sword. 
 
 "Wait, let me caress it before it goes 
 with my knight to fight the battle for the 
 land of the gods." 
 
HO IROKA: 
 
 She threw her long sleeve around the 
 blade. Only an inch or two at the point 
 was visible. She held it with both of her 
 hands over the thick covering of her 
 sleeves. 
 
 " What a brave thing you are," she said, 
 addressing the sword, " almost as brave as 
 my Masamitsu! " 
 
 A pause. 
 
 She looked at it, and then at him. 
 They were strangely intent, those beauti 
 ful eyes of her s! And he, who saw his own 
 image reflected in their depths, was thrilled 
 to the very marrow. 
 
 "A ah!" It was hardly a scream; 
 it was so faint. That was all she said as 
 she sunk down to the floor. 
 
 As for Masamitsu, he could not cry, 
 shout, speak he could not breathe. 
 
 Quick as a shock, he jerked the sword 
 from her. But it was too late. A mouth 
 was opened in her throat. It was ruddier 
 even than her lips. And from it life was 
 stepping out in a red stream. 
 
 He took her into his arms and struggled 
 for a word. It would not come. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN \\\ 
 
 She said: " For Ninon yours and mine 
 fight, fight! With you always 1 will 
 stand close by you by your side our flag, 
 uphold it! " 
 
 When her breath failed her, she smiled 
 at him. 
 
 VI 
 
 All the glory of the red-letter day, Sep 
 tember 17, 1894, was not to be the " Hi- 
 yei s " alone. At least such was the deter 
 mination of the " Akagi." 
 
 It was chaos aboard the " Hiyei " when 
 she came out triumphantly through the 
 Chinese line. 
 
 At 1.55 P. M. the " Hiyei " signalled her 
 distress. What a heaven-sent opportunity 
 for the " Akagi " I That is to say, it was 
 the finest chance for the " Akagi " to die 
 gloriously no doubt. And the " Akagi " 
 steadied her bow to plough through the 
 boiling, thundering, bursting melee. 
 
 The " Lai- Yuen/ the Chi- Yuen," and 
 the " Kwan-Chia " on both sides of the 
 
112 IROKA: 
 
 Chinese ironclads saw that the daring little 
 adventurer meant to follow in the wake of 
 the " Hiyei." And the combined tonnage 
 of 6,450 bore down against "Akagi s" 
 615, and the fire from the five 8J-inch 
 guns, seven 6-inch guns, four 5-inch, and 
 thirty machine guns roared against the 
 "Akagi s" one 9J and four 5-inch and 
 six machine guns. 
 
 All was hazy. Smoke and spray which 
 shots falling short pounded up into the air 
 completely blindfolded the " Akagi." The 
 Chinese were amused. The dare-devil will 
 surely lose her way and be abducted by the 
 sharks to the cool crystal palace of Ryu- 
 wo. Meanwhile, the fire-eyed broods of 
 perdition came to tempt her, smashing 
 into her hull and bursting on her decks 
 and singing and hissing in her upper 
 works. 
 
 And crash! 
 
 A shell smote her bridge. 
 
 Cadet Masamitsu was on the ladder 
 mounting up. And into his arms fell an 
 officer s body. The cadet recognised him 
 by the uniform. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 113 
 
 "Commander, Commander Sakamoto! " 
 he called. At the same time he pulled the 
 upper part of the body to see the com 
 mander s face to see whether he was 
 fatally hurt. 
 
 As he did so, he called again: 
 
 " Commander, are you seriously 
 wounded? Commander!" 
 
 A gush of blood which spattered his face 
 and breast was the only reply. 
 
 A shell had carried the commander s 
 head and blown it into smoke and a heroic 
 memory. 
 
 The cadet went upon the smoking 
 bridge with what was left of Lieutenant- 
 Commander Sakamoto in his arms. 
 
 The vessel shivered just then bang! 
 crash! The mainmast was humbled to the 
 deck, and the three men on the military 
 top were seen in midair striking a ghostly 
 pose against the smoke. The national en 
 sign, torn already with many a shot, flew 
 down into the sea. In truth, that was the 
 fall of a sun! 
 
 " Uphold the flag! " shouted the cadet. 
 He did not remember then, though, that 
 8 
 
114 IROKA: 
 
 in a flower-scented corner of Kioto, scarce 
 four months ago, when Shizuka was in his 
 arms and in those of death that her last 
 request had closed with the self-same sen 
 tence which he had shouted into the ears 
 of the desperate " Akagi." 
 
 He rushed down from the bridge; cut 
 his way across the paths of shots. 
 
 There were two men there already with 
 a jury mast. He climbed after them, and 
 with his own hand he pulled the halyard. 
 The Hino-Maru flag again waved over the 
 " Akagi." 
 
 "Banzai! Nippon Banzai! His Maj 
 esty ten thousand years. Mhon navy 
 ban " 
 
 It was so abrupt, that break in Masa- 
 mitsu s hurrah. 
 
 He was seen to falter, throw himself on 
 the jury mast, embrace it with both of his 
 arms. 
 
 "What s the matter?" 
 
 And the men wondered. 
 
 They saw, almost through the centre of 
 his back, there was a crimson hole. Blood 
 was starting to spurt out of it. He wore 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 115 
 
 a white coat that day. The red round hole 
 in his back on the white background of his 
 coat! 
 
 And so he dyed with his own blood 
 another national flag! 
 
A Japanese Sword 
 
A Japanese Sword 
 
 While the modern Kameoka was still 
 called Kameyama, Castle-town about 
 seventeen years before the revolution 
 (" the great earthquake," as we call it) of 
 1868 a duel was fought to the east of the 
 castle gate. The clan had two masters of 
 the sword, and it had always been a topic 
 of discussion among the samurai as to 
 which of the two was the greater. The 
 victor in the duel, purely out of respect 
 for the memory of the one he had slain, 
 and not at all from shame or fear, left the 
 clan. The vanquished was brought home. 
 
 A young woman, delicate and of noble 
 birth, received her husband s remains. 
 Some clanswomen saw her at the gate of 
 her now lonely home, and never could for 
 get the pale, beautiful girl-wife. To-day, 
 if you go among them, those women will 
 
120 1RQKA: 
 
 tell you all about it as vividly as they have 
 ever done. And, what is more, they will 
 tell you the same story over and over 
 again. Don t be afraid the tale, I as 
 sure you, will not bore you. 
 
 The young wife was proud, they say, 
 and when she thanked the friends who 
 brought back her husband (two years had 
 scarcely passed since they had been mar 
 ried, remember) mangled, pallid, bloody, 
 there was no tremour in her voice, and her 
 lips were as firm as when they had pressed 
 the bridal cup of saM. They know what 
 it costs to shut up all the anguish within 
 a woman s heart and put on a calm face, 
 that she may not tear other hearts along 
 with hers. They are proud of this, their 
 sister, and I promise you that they would 
 have done likewise under the same circum 
 stances. 
 
 All this happened to Nobuwo s mother, 
 five months before he was born. 
 
 Ujigami, the guardian deity of Kame- 
 yama, had his shrine on a hillock cloaked 
 thick with oak, about two hours walk 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 121 
 
 from the town. They were there, sitting 
 on a rock by a stone torii, one fine morn 
 ing of one of the last days of March 
 Nobuwo and his mother. There she told 
 him everything his father s death and 
 all. As she watched him (and not the 
 slightest expression of his emotion escaped 
 her) there came something like a smile on 
 her lips, as if her gratitude to the gods 
 made her happy, ah ! she had an excellent 
 reason to thank the gods, she spied the 
 soul of the child through his parted lips 
 and starting eyes, and saw that it was that 
 of her husband. 
 
 She led him by the hand to the front of 
 the shrine. There was a large metal mir 
 ror behind the open work, sending back 
 the light which the sun gave to it. His 
 mother told him how the mirror reflected 
 the naked soul of every votary who prayed 
 and swore there. 
 
 The young Nobuwo swore after his 
 mother falteringly; for he could scarcely 
 pronounce some of the big words used in 
 the oath. Ah, it was a touching sight, 
 this young soul calling upon the gods to 
 
122 1ROKA: 
 
 witness, as he swore, that he would never 
 allow the same heaven to cover himself 
 and his father s foe! His mother, by his 
 side, was in tears in spite of herself. But 
 it is also true that her beautiful face was 
 full of light. One could hardly find a 
 prouder woman than she. 
 
 At her deathbed (when Nobuwo was 
 fourteen) she made him renew his oath. 
 
 " With reverence receive," she said, and 
 gave him a sword in a case of heavy silk. 
 The samurai call their swords their 
 et souls." The sword was her husband s 
 soul. She had never, awake or asleep, 
 parted with it. 
 
 Young Nobuwo hugged it with frenzy, 
 speechless; but his tears slowly rolled from 
 his cheeks down to his mother s face. He 
 was bending over her. The light faded 
 slowly out of her eyes; but the smile 
 around her lips, was it not a reflection 
 of the torch lighting her soul into the 
 unknown? 
 
 After all, after all, noble mother, death 
 dares not lay his brutal hands on you 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 123 
 
 on you his touch is not ugly. So the boy 
 felt. 
 
 His progress in fencing and sword exer 
 cises was pronounced miraculous. 
 
 " Your skill is superior to mine/ said 
 his local instructor kindly, "go to Yedo > 
 and seek a worthier master." 
 
 Nobuwo was in his master s private 
 chamber, about a week after he had en 
 tered the club of Hida at Yedo. His mas 
 ter gave him a cup of sake (for which 
 honour his fellows, when they heard of it, 
 gave him a mental cuff) and asked him to 
 speak freely of his history. And Nobuwo 
 found it pleasant to talk about himself. 
 
 After that his master was specially par 
 tial to him. Of course his fellows were 
 the first who noticed it; but he, too, was 
 obliged to admit it. But his peers had an 
 excuse for this. 
 
 " ShiJcataga nei ya such a skilful dis 
 ciple to favour, truly is it not reasonable 
 for the master? " they all said. 
 
 They also said, " We cannot say how 
 high he will climb! " behind his back. 
 
124 1ROKA: 
 
 But when Nobuwo was within ear-shot, 
 they bemoaned the decline of learning and 
 art and the prevalence of the brutal exer 
 cise,, meaning fencing. 
 
 Hero worship is a strong trait of every 
 Japanese young man. But with Nobuwo 
 it was the trait: more correctly speaking, 
 there was nothing else within him. About 
 a year after he came to know his master, 
 his greatest joy would have been to have 
 died for him. But had he forgot his 
 mother and the oath he swore after her? 
 Not at all. Every night he had a regular 
 love scene with the sword of his father. 
 But how could he die for his master and 
 accomplish his life aim at the same time? 
 Nobuwo had never thought of it just in 
 that light. 
 
 There is a well-beaten road, as you can 
 see in your history, that leads from Baby 
 lon to Constantinople; from Korakorum to 
 Pekin; from Nara to Yedo. And the 
 Shogun s regime marched out of Yedo 
 along the same highway. When the revo 
 lution of 1868 was painting the streets of 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 125 
 
 Yedo with human blood, just as if some 
 one printed its facsimile map in red ink, 
 Nobuwo was seventeen. He was with his 
 master, Hida. He was impatient was he 
 not old enough to avenge his father now? 
 He went to his master and made a clean 
 breast of the affair and asked his advice. 
 
 "Better wait till you are twenty years 
 old," he said, with his usual grave tone; 
 "then I will be your assistant sword." 
 
 That settled the question. None in the 
 empire, wide as it was, stood higher than 
 his master. With his help he was sure of 
 success. There were many numskulls who 
 believed that his master was, after all, a 
 mere mortal. As for Nobuwo, he took no 
 stock in any such nonsense. 
 
 Tamagawa, the river of jewels, is not 
 false to its name. Many an unfortunate 
 girl made a mirror of it and sighed out a 
 wish that its purity were hers. There, at 
 the river, the soiled souls of the great capi 
 tal used to gather. Whether they have 
 ever succeeded in washing their stains is 
 not on record. 
 
126 IROKA: 
 
 Hida sat, jelly-fish fashion, on the moss- 
 covered pebbles under the shade of a large 
 oak tree on its bank. The river whispered 
 to him confidentially and sparkled at his 
 feet. Nobuwo was not with him., which 
 was rather extraordinary. What was the 
 matter? The fencing master was there, 
 from all appearance, sunning the inside of 
 his soul, and, naturally, he cared to have 
 no one save the ever-present blue overhead 
 to witness him. 
 
 " Shall I tell him all? I will tell him 
 all. The gods know that I love the boy." 
 Such was his thought. But something 
 kept him from going any further in his 
 resolution. And yet he seemed to know 
 that he must. Have you ever loved? 
 Then you will understand him. 
 
 " Death is nothing to me," he went on 
 in his thought. But there was a confes 
 sion in his heart at the same time, to wit, 
 it was sweet to that strong swordsman to 
 love and be loved by the young boy. He 
 forgot his wife and his children, and the 
 boy stood in his mind clearer and clearer, 
 ever growing. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 127 
 
 " Could I but commit kappuku and give 
 my head to him! But he is my equal, 
 perhaps a superior. To fall under the 
 sword of a peer is no disgrace. But the 
 world knows him as my disciple. What 
 mud would it fling at my ancestral name?" 
 
 Ah! that was a heavy blow and it felled 
 him. To retain the name you have re 
 ceived from your father and hand it down 
 to your children in its snow purity and 
 with an increase of halo, is a great thing 
 with a Japanese samurai. Hida recovered 
 from the blow, which is saying a great deal 
 more than you can safely say about the 
 courage of a Bonaparte or of him who 
 taketh a walled city. 
 
 " Disgrace or no disgrace, the boy shall 
 know the truth. I will fall at his hand." 
 He ended his reflection with the half- 
 uttered prayer, " Oh, eight million gods, 
 grant that his sword may be too powerful 
 for the defence mine may afford! " 
 
 Hida celebrated the twentieth birthday 
 of Nobuwo at his house. Many noted 
 swordsmen of the city were there. At the 
 
128 IROKA: 
 
 banquet Hida read a public declaration to 
 the effect that Nobuwo should be his suc 
 cessor in case he, from any cause, became 
 unable to fill his duties as a master. The 
 sword dance, the tin-rin ten-chan of the 
 samisen, the singing of Chinese poems, the 
 fan dance of the geisha, helped to pass 
 the sake cups around the merry circle. 
 
 " Steady, my boy! " Hida was saying to 
 Nobuwo, by the solitary off house, far from 
 the noise of the carousal, under the mid 
 night stars. " Steady yes, it is true. 
 Believe me. For what reason would I 
 deceive you? " 
 
 " I believe not even a word. Oh, mas 
 ter, how can such things be possible? " 
 
 Truth, the whole naked truth, was told 
 him. 
 
 Within, the merry-making, the drink 
 ing, and dancing went on far into the 
 night, and the men with their brains 
 soaked in sake met the dawn coming 
 down the Orient hills in her white silk 
 gown. 
 
 But Nobuwo met her a sober man in 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 129 
 
 fact, that was the first sober moment since 
 he was born. 
 
 Have you ever heard a hair-stiffening 
 ghost story? and then have you gone into a 
 dark., dark room? Do you remember how 
 you felt? Did you want to rush out madly? 
 And then at the same time did you not try 
 to sit down where you stood and compose 
 yourself? Man s soul experiences some 
 thing like that when a huge octopus, 
 otherwise known as a combination of 
 circumstances, comes along and makes 
 a spittoon out of it. 
 
 Nobuwo s soul was in the dark. The 
 new light that fell upon his life was too 
 strong for him,, blinding, scaling his eyes. 
 He did not know what to do; but he 
 wanted to know how to act, so badly. 
 
 His father s enemy was there within 
 his grasp, you might say. His oath ap 
 peared before him, and he recognised that 
 that was the only kind of bread his spirit 
 had fed upon all its life. 
 
 His hero, his archangel! he was also 
 there within his embrace. And the gods 
 9 
 
130 1ROKA: 
 
 to whom he had bowed night and morn 
 ing recalled to him his prayers and woke 
 them in echoes in his heart: " Grant, oh, 
 ye gods, that one day I may tell him 
 (meaning his master) how grateful I am, 
 by giving my life for him." 
 
 Many others before him had torn their 
 hair, but never as he did; many others had 
 had their hearts broken (for this has been 
 a wretched world for a long time), but 
 never so brutally, so helplessly. 
 
 "Dark, dark! no light?" he cried over 
 and over again. 
 
 You can hardly believe that a young 
 man of twenty could strike a chord that is 
 truly touching; but there was that in No- 
 buwo s cry which would have made any 
 miserable wretch happy by comparison, 
 I mean. That was his first experience, 
 and it went hard with him. He acted 
 like a silly, crazy baby, in good faith, 
 and my hero awaits the first stone from 
 one of you who have had a similar experi 
 ence. 
 
 He did not know what to do. Light 
 was what he wanted. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 131 
 
 He was in that old dingy room, alone 
 with the sword three days after the great 
 revelation. He was gazing at it, as he had 
 done every night when all else went into 
 the big star-domed temple to worship in 
 devout silence. As he looked at the sword 
 as if it were a thing of great depth, he re 
 membered how his mother appeared in his 
 dreams, two nights in succession. She 
 came to him with the same smile with 
 which she died; stood at his pillow and 
 pointed to the sword which Nobuwo was 
 hugging in his sleep. She did not speak. 
 
 He was looking at the sword, because, 
 as I have said, he wanted light, and be 
 cause he did not know where else he could 
 go for it. He was sure that if he could 
 but read the handwriting that came and 
 went there, he could get what he wanted. 
 The dull lamp-light fell upon the stainless 
 sword in stars, and at every turn Nobuwo 
 gave to it, blood-tides rushed down its 
 sheen. Mysteries deepened, increased. 
 Light never came. 
 
 But he must have light. The sword was 
 his only prophet. Nothing discouraged 
 
1^2 IROKA: 
 
 him therefore,, and he repeated the same 
 thing over and over every night. 
 
 When Nobuwo left his master at the 
 birthday celebration, by the off house, he 
 had said: " Master, give me one month s 
 leisure. Then I shall let you know." 
 
 The month had dwindled into a day. 
 He was as much at sea as ever. That 
 night he went to his oracle, the sword, as 
 usual. The message must come or else he 
 must die. 
 
 Die! there was a strong flash of light 
 on the blade. The flash entered Nobuwo s 
 eyes. He breathed as if he had just come 
 out of deep water. He sheathed the 
 sword. 
 
 The following morning he sent his mas 
 ter a note: 
 
 Condescend to wait at midnight at the shrine of 
 Yoshida. 
 
 The note found his master ready. Yo- 
 shida s shrine was half way between Yedo 
 and Tamagawa, and was a favourite spot 
 for the revolutionary patriots. It stood on 
 the very spot where that famous patriot- 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 133 
 
 statesman was beheaded by the She-gun s 
 administration. The spear-shaped cedars 
 raised a queer kind of battlement about 
 the sacred shrine. Every storm that comes 
 along so it is said and believed carries 
 from it a loud complaint against heaven 
 that allowed so great an outrage to come 
 to pass. It was weird enough about the 
 shrine even when the sun was mirthful on 
 the leaves, but at night it was, as well 
 known to the boys of the neighbourhood, 
 one of the places where a gypsy would not 
 go for a dime. 
 
 Hida lighted his lantern, because he 
 could not proceed any farther without its 
 help. He was a few hundred yards from 
 the shrine in the bosom of the dense 
 woods. He had dressed in white, as all 
 samurai do when death is their bride. 
 When he arrived there it was a trifle be 
 fore midnight. 
 
 "So I am the first on the field/ he 
 thought. 
 
 He sat at the foot of a stone light-stand 
 and waited. An hour passed; no one 
 came. Two hours passed still he was 
 
134 IROKA: 
 
 alone. Then he took up his lantern and 
 went round the shrine, thinking. He 
 went round twice; for man becomes some 
 what absent-minded sometimes. One of 
 the branches of a cedar tree was bent over 
 at the east corner of the shrine. The un 
 certain light of his lantern fell upon an 
 object which looked somewhat like a small 
 pile of snow. 
 
 And the reason that made Hida stand 
 stone-still, tells the whole story. 
 
 A letter was found on the ground, 
 but as Nobuwo bowed over it, right after 
 committing hara-kiri, it was stained 
 badly. 
 
 Hida could but read little of it, but it 
 was not altogether because blood obliter 
 ated the writing. I doubt very seriously 
 whether any one of you can finish the let 
 ter. Sugita, one of the closest friends of 
 Hida, a famous swordsman, tried to read 
 it, and said that it made a woman out of 
 him, which was a startling confession from 
 that man. 
 
 Among other things which I need not 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 135 
 
 repeat here, for surely there is no merit 
 in making my readers tearful, there were 
 many allusions to the ethical code of Con 
 fucius. The letter also cited many his 
 toric examples wherein the Buddhas ap 
 peared on the scenes of leataki uchi 
 (enemy-slaying) and assisted in the pious 
 deeds of filial sons in severing the heads 
 of their enemies. 
 
 The letter admitted that the writer was 
 a perjurer; and, above all, a coward. (Now 
 cowardice is the blackest in the category 
 of crimes known to a Japanese samurai.) 
 A coward, Nobuwo confessed ; but he 
 added that he was willing to pay that price 
 for the privilege of loving Hida and that 
 the price was sweet. 
 
 The boy was a total stranger to Him 
 who said, " Love your enemies; bless them 
 that curse you; do good to them that hate 
 you." 
 
 Had he but known Him! 
 
 A modest tomb marks a corner of the 
 vast Aoyama cemetery and the mosses are 
 already gathering around the name of 
 
1^6 IROKA: TALES OF JAPAN 
 
 Ota Nobuwo, cut in the stone. And 
 this marks the spot where one of the 
 noblest families of Kameyama returned to 
 dust. 
 
Hirata Kojiro 
 
Hirata Kojiro 
 
 A Story of Tokio Society 
 
 Hirata Kojiro is a " society man," and 
 although it sounds contradictory an in 
 teresting talker,, a disillusioned philoso 
 pher, and altogether a very peculiar fel 
 low, inasmuch as he is one of the very few 
 whom knowledge has thoroughly humili 
 ated. Hirata Kojiro at the Imperial Uni 
 versity of Tokio led his class in the de 
 partment of literature. Hirata Kojiro 
 knows the lady who uses an ancient mono 
 gram on a corner of her perfumed note, 
 and who is a great dame great enough to 
 wink at a Cabinet Minister or the young 
 wearer of one of the oldest and most hon 
 oured crests in the realm and turn them 
 
140 IROKA: 
 
 into dummy dolls. He knows also a cer 
 tain beauty whose name is dyed and 
 worked out in gold in front of a certain 
 house in a corner of Yoshiwara. And 
 Yoshiwara is that flower path of Tokio 
 which is responsible for a great deal of the 
 romance., laughter, suicides, follies., and 
 purgatory of Japan, both in the days when 
 the Tokio of the Ten-no was the Yedo of 
 the Shoguns and in these later times, too, 
 when we have learned the use of pistols. 
 
 The fact that brought him many trials 
 and that made him open his eyes to his 
 true life-mission the fact, therefore, that 
 was at once his curse and salvation was 
 that he was very handsome. He was born 
 on the top step of that ladder built by a 
 humorous god and called " social stand 
 ing; " and he had much money and more 
 wit. It was not his fault that all these 
 things were thrust upon him. 
 
 For at least twenty years, ever since he 
 could remember for he was twenty-six 
 when he made his Pompeiian entry into 
 Tokio society he had looked upon him 
 self in the glass several times a day. But 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 141 
 
 he had to confess that he had never seen 
 himself truly till not less than two hun 
 dred pairs of eyes Poppaean, 1 Enclosian, 
 and otherwise presented him with a con 
 vex, complex mirror. 
 
 His face, though handsome, was at the 
 same time in open revolt in every line of 
 its features with the conventional idea. 
 Although you could not see the beautiful 
 images that were hanging in the interior 
 of his high, dome-like forehead, you could 
 guess without much trouble that it was 
 filled with the unrealised masterpieces of 
 great artists. His nose was straight and 
 slender, and in the quiverings of his nos 
 trils you could see many captured fairies 
 beating their pink wings. His mouth 
 seemed to be too sensitive to have a set 
 form: when closed, at its corners where the 
 lips tie themselves in modest union, you 
 could observe a touch of twilight. It was 
 red, warm to the eye, full of ripples and 
 storms, just like a sea in short, a mystery. 
 He seemed to have enough hair for two 
 heads of passionate women, and it was so 
 black that an Egyptian night was white 
 
142 IROKA: 
 
 beside it. But, after all, women and peo 
 ple in general who had seen him did not 
 remember these features. "What they 
 could not forget were his eyes. They were 
 much too large to suit the taste of the 
 artists of the Ukiyoye school. When they 
 opened with the lifting of his brows they 
 were childlike, innocent; when they closed 
 half way they were an ecstatic dream, and 
 when they looked at nothing particularly 
 and were lost, as it were, in the crowded 
 drawing-room of the gods, they were Vedic 
 hymns. 
 
 Those who saw him at social functions 
 felt as if they were out in evening dress to 
 watch a comet. They all exclaimed: "A 
 brilliant series of triumphs," and a strange 
 chorus of envy, disappointment, indiffer 
 ence, savage revolt, melancholy, and what 
 not added, " Oh, of course! " 
 
 But Hirata did not see the thing in the 
 same light. And as he threw his silk ki 
 mono or swallowtail coat, as the case 
 might be, into the gloomy arms of the 
 break o ? day, or as he lay in his bed beg 
 ging Sleep to be good-natured to his tired 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 143 
 
 heart and brain, his fancies were as bitter 
 as those of the Emperor on historic St. 
 Helena. He was a failure. And really 
 you could not blame him, seeing that 
 where he dug for diamonds he found only 
 dirt and vacuum. So, very logically to 
 himself, very amazingly to others, and 
 " abominably absurdly " to a certain num 
 ber of titled mothers whose daughters were 
 " charming " in the columns of society 
 papers and on the lips of social gatherings, 
 after seven years of toil and humiliation 
 he disappeared from the eyes of men as 
 completely as a shooting star. Of course 
 he was crazy nothing short of that as 
 the gossips very justly said. 
 
 Fuji-yama, they say, rose from the 
 Musashi Plain in a single night. And 
 at the New Year celebration three years 
 later Hirata as suddenly came out of his 
 hermitage. 
 
 His friends did not know what it all 
 meant, but certainly they were very happy 
 to see him. 
 
 " You act like a prophet, you conceited 
 
144 IROKA: 
 
 rogue, you! No Gotama, no Confucius 
 though, I warrant, but a Mahomet! " was 
 the greeting from one of his club chums. 
 
 To a few of his most intimate fellows he 
 said: " I am as bad as a new woman; I have 
 a mission, this time a very serious one. 
 The fact is, it has possessed me and has 
 forced me into the arena I am a mis 
 sionary! " 
 
 At which many whistles were heard; 
 outbursts of cheers and laughter followed, 
 and then the reinstalment of Hirata on 
 the throne of King Wit and the invocation 
 of the gods to witness. 
 
 II 
 
 The consensus of the comments on the 
 marriage of Count Yoshimori was that, for 
 the first time, one of the cleverest men of 
 the august reign of Meiji made a consum 
 mate masterpiece of an ass of himself. So 
 much so, indeed, that some of the gentle 
 men of leisure among his personal friends 
 took pains to take up a subscription to 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 145 
 
 build him a decent monument respect 
 able by the side of the Sphinx on the Nile 
 atop the Kudan Hill, in the full view of 
 the capital, just as soon as he would con 
 fess his weakness. The reason of it all 
 was this: the count, a man of the world, 
 went back to his ancestral homestead and 
 married a girl there who knew vastly more 
 of the Blessed Land of the Lotus than of 
 the most ordinary fact of modern society. 
 
 The metropolitan ladies were very con 
 descending to the bride, " poor child! " 
 But that maid, with the scent of cedar 
 and clover in her breath, fresh from the 
 modest shades of primitive simplicity, had 
 something, somewhere about her it might 
 have been in her dreamy gaze or in the 
 languid inclination of her head, like a lily 
 heavy with dews, they could not tell 
 which irritated great ladies who wished to 
 be as .omniscient as well as omnipotent as 
 the gods, and were succeeding fairly well. 
 
 In a short time Tokio society did the 
 
 countess the honour of adding another 
 
 adjective to her pet appellation, and " poor 
 
 child!" became "poor, strange child!" 
 
 10 
 
146 IROKA: 
 
 With all the sincerity of this country-bred 
 maid, which amused the capital not a 
 little, there was an air of acting. As for 
 her personal appearance, that was the one 
 thing which afforded an excuse for her 
 husband s weakness in his marriage. You 
 might say of her that she was as homely as 
 a daisy. But she was such a daisy that 
 had you been a peony in a king s garden 
 you could not help envying her. Some 
 fairy in a dreamy mood must have woven 
 the satin of her skin, which had the lustre 
 of wet silk. The eyes of men, contemplat 
 ing her, seemed to fall ever toward her 
 feet, because her grace seemed as if she was 
 just half way out of the ethereal world of 
 fancies into this real humdrum. Her 
 hands and arms, escaping from the cur 
 tain-like Japanese sleeves, were a pair of 
 pink roses blooming on the perianth of 
 white lilies. The oval of her cheeks was 
 adorned with those finger-marks of happi 
 ness called dimples, her lips were a temp 
 tation, and her eyes seemed always looking 
 for a lover to leap from the golden heart 
 of a plum blossom. All of these charms 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 147 
 
 entered into an ensemble delightfully 
 childlike and marvellously resembling a 
 cherub of painters dreams. 
 
 " Mark what I tell you, the count will 
 have trouble on his hands in a month," 
 was heard in a corner of the Tokio Club. 
 
 " As if you were the first fellow who 
 plays the prophet on that point! " was 
 also heard. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Countess Yoshimori was a daughter of 
 the rigorous ethics of elder Japan. " A 
 faithful wife never sees two men," her 
 mother had said to her, and she remem 
 bered it. But what would you? Tokio 
 society was not going to go back into the 
 picturesque past of half a century ago just 
 on account of the countess. She had to 
 see, and she did see, many another man 
 besides her husband among them Hirata 
 Kojiro. 
 
 Marquis lyeya gave a ball at Rokumei 
 Kwan. In a corner of that hall of fashion, 
 
148 1ROKA: 
 
 where pines, palms, and not a few flow 
 ers seemed to invite Secrecy to swing its 
 nest, Hirata and the countess held con 
 verse. 
 
 Hirata They tell me, madam (pointing 
 to his heart), there is a vacuum here. 
 
 Countess Yoshimori Then will your 
 heart belong to a fortunate discoverer by 
 right of discovery? If she succeed? 
 
 Hirata But a female Nansen is a rare 
 possibility. 
 
 Countess Yosliimori Then it is at best 
 a North Pole. 
 
 She laughed as a bird might laugh. 
 
 What she had thought impossible be 
 came not only possible, probable, but ac 
 tual; what she had laughed at became 
 merry at her expense. She had all the 
 symptoms of a violent fever; she stared 
 sometimes at a blank wall. She did not 
 know that before her, ladies without num 
 ber had gone through the same Eed Sea, 
 taking a leap, as they thought, into the 
 promised land and finding themselves in 
 a desert; but that was a fact. If you are 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 149 
 
 reasonable you certainly cannot blame the 
 ladies consider Hirata! It is like put 
 ting the sun in the sky and blaming the 
 simple-hearted idolaters because they wor 
 ship it. Hirata, moreover, had never 
 looked so handsome, had never taken so 
 much pains with his toilette. 
 
 "Has sharp-witted Count Yoshimori be 
 come blind all of a sudden? " the capital 
 asked, behind his back, in a whisper. 
 
 IV 
 
 The distance between the dizzy height 
 where woman makes a god of a mortal 
 man and becomes overwhelmed with his 
 charms, and that abyss into which she 
 leaps, and which is called the conquest of 
 love, is but a step with some women. 
 With the countess it was more than twice 
 the span of the Pacific Ocean. In the 
 bower of her youth, where society deserted 
 her, books, which to a certain type of in 
 tellect prove a better teacher than experi 
 ences, and certainly of much wider scope 
 
150 1ROKA: 
 
 in their fields of tuition, took up her 
 education. 
 
 When, therefore, she saw Hirata, all the 
 possible situations which fiction and his 
 tory could invent and record of a woman 
 who finds that her heart is in the keeping 
 of another than her husband, seemed to 
 pass in panoramas before her. She raised 
 her white, slender hand to give battle to 
 the whole world, its petrified institutions, 
 its modes of thoughts older than history, 
 its graveyards and its gods. 
 
 She began, as so many do, by shunning 
 Hirata, which was at once the confession 
 of her partiality for him and her mistrust 
 in her own defense. Compared to Hirata, 
 Napoleon had no confidence in his powers 
 to charm victory. And that overwhelm 
 ing ease with which he trod the path to 
 conquest sure of it as a god gave him 
 a grace beyond all dreams. 
 
 On her part pride was summoned: " At 
 best he would despise me," she sighed to 
 herself, stopping in the midst of her 
 absent-minded toilette. Then she weak 
 ened to the extent that she had to call the 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 151 
 
 ethical elements fidelity to her husband 
 and the virtue of woman to her assist 
 ance. Finding her love rejoicing at every 
 obstacle she could raise in its course, she 
 blamed her fate. 
 
 Half a year of her acquaintance with 
 Hirata passed, and already there were mo 
 ments in her life when, in her philosophy, 
 she turned fatalist. As for all the mis 
 fortunes that might accompany her adven 
 ture that desert stretch of her life of 
 " shame," as the world calls it these all 
 beckoned her with a gesture as captivating 
 as the delirium of ecstatic love. She was 
 very cautious, with all that. The tests she 
 applied to Hirata were miracles of inge 
 nuity; and step by step, degree by degree, 
 she made them stricter and harder to bear. 
 And at last, seeing him pass through them 
 like a piece of steel in the hand of a sword- 
 smith, becoming purer and truer, she 
 looked up to heaven and informed the 
 immortals: 
 
 " He is my god! 
 
 By " he " she meant Hirata. 
 
152 IROKA: 
 
 " Here is a tribute to your charms, ma 
 dam," her husband said to her, and gave 
 her a note to read. It was addressed to 
 her husband an anonymous note, warn 
 ing him against his wife. When she 
 looked up to him from the paper he said: 
 
 " How ridiculous! How perfectly ab 
 surd! . . . Ha! ha! ha! " There was 
 such a ring of sincerity in his merry 
 laughter. 
 
 In fact, no longer able to resist, the 
 countess outraged gossip. Of course, she 
 looked upon her love as purely intellectual, 
 spiritual she would have died before 
 staining it with a grosser element. But 
 to be a constant companion of a god such 
 as Hirata! She had surrendered her heart 
 completely. Her husband, one of the 
 shrewdest wits of the capital, was mag 
 nanimity made blind. Instead of being 
 humiliated by this manly trust of her hus 
 band she accused him of indifference and 
 vowed to punish it. What a justification 
 for her conduct! 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 153 
 
 It was nearly two o clock in the morn 
 ing. The moon stood pale and silent 
 many steps below the zenith on her de 
 cline, and she threw the dark outline of a 
 weeping willow almost half way across the 
 quicksilver of the lakelet in the back gar 
 den of Count Yoshimori s Azabu chateau. 
 
 " At the same hour three nights hence! " 
 a woman s voice murmured. 
 
 " Yes, madam, all will be ready; I will 
 wait for you at the gate. The steamer, as 
 you know, madam, will sail at 5.35 in the 
 morning. Three hours from here to Yoko 
 hama/ a man s voice answered. 
 
 " And America will be the Balcony of 
 the Lotus for me for us! " 
 
 " Till then." 
 
 "0 yasumi!" 
 
 Two shadows emerged from under the 
 willow. One of them flitted from shadow 
 to shadow, along the sheen of the moon 
 struck ripples of the lakelet, till it reached 
 the vine-covered wall of the chateau. It 
 ascended the rope ladder gently, lightly. 
 
154 1ROKA: 
 
 The other stood perfectly still till a white 
 arm waved in the silver of the moon from 
 out of the window. Then it sought the 
 stone wall, cleared it, and was no more. 
 
 The moon was silent; the night was full 
 of tears. 
 
 The sleepy moon was again the sole 
 witness. 
 
 There was a noise among the vines on 
 the wall of the chateau of Count Yoshi- 
 mori. The noise sounded like the confu 
 sion of many kidnapped sighs. The rope 
 ladder was rubbing the leaves in its fall. 
 Very soon a grey, bird-like shadow perched 
 upon it. Step by step it descended, wak 
 ing the midnight dreams of the vine into 
 many a suppressed exclamation. 
 
 There were soft steps approaching the 
 foot of the ladder, but these the countess 
 did not hear. There was a dark outline of 
 a man at the point toward which she was 
 descending, but him, she did not see. 
 
 Within a few steps from the ground, 
 turning her head to survey the distance 
 from the earth, she saw the masked man. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 155 
 
 Then she let go her hands on the ropes 
 and fell into his arms. 
 
 " Sweet lover, how thoughtful of you! 
 I expected to find you at the gate! " she 
 said, embracing him. 
 
 " My darling, my wife! " 
 
 A savage shock as powerful as an elec 
 tric current shot through her. She gave 
 a violent start and tried to push herself 
 away with a fearful force. But Count 
 Yoshimori held her firmly. 
 
 "Be calm, my dear," he said, gently. 
 " He is here too see ? " 
 
 Another shadow glided out of an azalea 
 bush and came toward her. Yes, it was 
 he: and the countess expected him to de 
 spatch her husband into a dreamless sleep 
 with a blow. Her husband said: 
 
 " Let me have the pleasure of present 
 ing to your ladyship a missionary, engaged 
 in the work of saving hearts husbands 
 sweethearts." 
 
 An hysterical laugh she fainted the 
 death of romance! 
 
 There is no truer wife in the world to 
 day than Countess Yoshimori. 
 
Kataki-Uchi 
 
Kataki-Uchi 
 
 Like many another serious thing a 
 modest breeze can blow down an oak while 
 in the seed the whole thing had its birth 
 in the light laughter of ill-timed levity. 
 
 The banquet it was given in honour of 
 the Autumn Moon was held on the pal 
 ace veranda of our lord of the Kameyama 
 Castle. The maple leaves were turning, 
 and the Ninth Moon of the year was dying. 
 With all that, summer did not seem to like 
 the idea of being forgot, and the memory 
 of her riotous glory hung somewhere you 
 could not tell just where to save your life 
 perhaps alone in the minds of the poets 
 at the banquets as the gracious perfume 
 lingers when the lady is passed and gone. 
 
 Mazima Kumando was at the banquet. 
 
160 1ROKA: 
 
 The Buddhist speaks of the full moon as 
 representing Truth not an ugly idea. 
 And., on that night, she did look like the 
 face of a Buddha pensive, nirvanic, beau 
 tiful. They chanted her praise in classic 
 couplets; and,, of course, they also drank to 
 her health. For was it not for that they 
 had gathered there? The result was, that 
 in spite of the serene charms of the au 
 tumnal moon, spring tided through the 
 veins of the samurai feasters. The sake 
 also loosened the string which ties the 
 tongue and which is called discretion. 
 Battlefield experiences for veterans were 
 many among them adventures with bears, 
 and also of love. Men are such hopelessly 
 and incurably vain fools. They talked I 
 mean they blew their own horns, and 
 blessed are they who blow their own horns, 
 for at least they will be blown! of fenc 
 ing, of the art of jyujitsu. 
 
 " Nothing can hold a candle to the Itto 
 school when it comes to the real test of 
 swordsmanship." 
 
 " There is a secret stroke in the Shibu- 
 kawa school of which none others dream! " 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 161 
 
 " In spite of all the secrets under the 
 heavens, there is nothing that can hope to 
 cope with the Shinkage school." 
 
 " That really sounds to me a large state 
 ment. Ah, if words be facts! " 
 
 " The august one speaks as if he would 
 not object to seeing my statement tested. 
 Very good. Nothing is easier." 
 
 " May the humble one beg the honour 
 of being your pair-sword? " 
 
 And as sake mounted to their heads 
 they rose with their hands on the hilts of 
 their swords. 
 
 " Gentlemen, gentlemen! Ah, gentle 
 men! Allow the humble one to remind 
 the honourable presences that this is the 
 palace of our lord, the prince." 
 
 (The samurai could draw the sword in 
 the palace of their lord. But they apolo 
 gised for their misbehaviour by commit 
 ting hara-kiri on the morrow.) 
 
 Thereupon the humorous passed the 
 resolution: 
 
 " All the discussions, military, are too 
 angular for a gathering such as this! The 
 god of mirth! this is a gentle fete! " 
 11 
 
1 62 1ROKA: 
 
 Love adventures, then? Where, pray, 
 were they out of place? 
 
 It was not given to the common to un 
 derstand everything. This among other 
 things: why a certain set of people could 
 find such a storm of merriment in a " once- 
 upon-a-time-there-was-a-fairy," or "but 
 she was a Komachi! " or " when I was a 
 devil of a fellow/ and so forth. 
 
 " Oh, the babblings of babes, aha! ha! " 
 No one hearing that voice could believe 
 that it was sixty-one winters old. And 
 the appearance of the speaker was a more 
 skilful liar than his voice. 
 
 " Through what knotty karma or 
 through what heinous crime that we might 
 have committed in our dreams, do we de 
 serve this punishment?" A youthful 
 voice opened fire upon him. 
 
 "What punishment?" 
 
 " Yes; what else could the love-confes 
 sion of sixty-one winters be? " 
 
 "Ah, well!" 
 
 " What I want to know, sir," the young 
 man was desperate, " is how you are going 
 to apologise to your bald head." 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 163 
 
 Another young man broke in: 
 
 " From a saintly, martyr-like motive, 
 then, just to save the situation " 
 
 It was a selfish and at the same time 
 an exquisite pleasure of bullying once for 
 all the old beau into silence that they 
 wanted; but the result was the same: they 
 allowed the young man to tell his little 
 story. 
 
 It was on the Eiver Katsura, in the Val 
 ley of Arashi-Yama so went the story of 
 the young man. The water of the stream 
 was almost altogether made up of the 
 melted snow from the high, dustless, 
 lonely world; therefore there was that pi 
 quant charm, in the water, like the cyni 
 cism of Talleyrand. But the spring and 
 cherry blossoms were already filling the 
 boudoir of good old Dame Nature with the 
 dawn-cloud of satin and mists that were 
 tulle. There was a pleasure boat, and in 
 it two ladies. The servants had gone after 
 something and left the boat moored to the 
 bank. A drunkard came along; insulted 
 the ladies the young man to the rescue 
 and Eomance was born. 
 
1 64 IROKA: 
 
 Love at first sight; and what tender 
 leave-taking! 
 
 " Talk about the tendrils of morning- 
 glories; the grace of willows! Pshaw! 
 And when her arms became entangled 
 and all the rest of it, you know. I m not 
 a novelist, but " 
 
 " Y-e-s! " a lazy hybrid between sneer, 
 laughter, and condescension. " Just then, 
 you honourably condescended to wake up, 
 did you not? And it was really too bad, 
 that terrible cold in your august head and 
 that devilish rheumatism in your honour 
 able legs! Be gracious enough to conde 
 scend to enlighten us whether the pebbles 
 on the dry river bed are the best stuff for 
 bedding or not, pray! " 
 
 " Just as I thought you are skeptical. 
 Very well, then. Here is the proof." 
 
 He took out from the breast folds of his 
 kimono a brocade sack, very small and 
 dainty as the plum blossom. 
 
 " This is her parting gift. I have al 
 ways carried it in my Jcimono, because it 
 has such a delicious fragrance. Smell it 
 if you like." 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 165 
 
 Skepticism bowed, and the scent-sack 
 went the round. The majority of young 
 men laughed at him and told him that his 
 worthy aunt was not proof against thieves. 
 But they believed him. None had ever 
 smelt such a delicate perfume before. 
 There was just one exception to this 
 Mazima Kumando. 
 
 Handsome, rather pale, and with a line 
 of determination dimpled at its corners for 
 his mouth, high brow and an upright 
 figure. He was a newcomer from a distant 
 clan. Our lord met him at Kioto and en 
 gaged him at once with much solicitation 
 and liberality. The prince made no mis 
 take in his choice. There were only three 
 men in the entire clan who could handle 
 the sword better than he. And yet, he was 
 employed as the tutor to the young 
 princes. 
 
 Mazima Kumando recognised the bro 
 cade sack, and he was well acquainted with 
 the delicate perfume. 
 
 Years ago he had saved the life of a 
 princess a sister of his former lord. The 
 grateful lady begged him to accept the 
 
1 66 IROKA: 
 
 scent-sack. It had been the treasure of 
 the princely house that little sack where 
 upon was wrought one of those microscopic 
 miracles/ of embroidery. And the princess 
 wanted it and the delicate perfume therein 
 to recall to him, in their charming and 
 fragrant way, her thankful heart. When 
 he returned home, he naturally offered it 
 to his lady, and so the responsibility of 
 guarding it fell upon her. 
 
 One spring they spent a month at the 
 Capital of Flowers, and the lady went out 
 to see the cherry blossoms of Arashi-Yama. 
 On her return home, she found that she 
 had lost her precious scent-sack. A long 
 and exhaustive search for it; disappoint- 
 - ment was the only reward of it all. 
 
 Such, then, was the history of the sack 
 of perfume. That also was the reason why 
 Mazima recognised it at once, with a sin 
 gular storm of emotions. 
 
 An awful pallor fell upon him; the sak6 
 summer was chilled out of his veins. Such 
 sudden snowstorm of his features could 
 not escape the notice of his merry friends. 
 
 " Are you ill? What s the matter? " 
 
I* ALES OF JAPAN 167 
 
 All eyes, in an instant, were upon him. 
 Shadows were gathering in his eyes. They 
 were fixed upon the mat without seeing it. 
 Nearly all who had heard the story be 
 lieved the teller of the tale: he had never 
 had a reputation of being imaginative. 
 And then, too, appearance was so much in 
 his favour. He was not exactly a sober 
 man at the beginning of his story, nor, in 
 deed, at the end of the telling. But all of 
 a sudden, as soon as his eyes rested upon 
 the death snow of Mazima, who seemed to 
 have recognised the sack, he was a very 
 sober man. One word from him would 
 have saved the situation, and also one, 
 two, three lives among others his own. 
 But what would you? Men are not gods,, 
 and cowardice, more than conscience, 
 makes us fools. Let us be just. Kaneko 
 the name of the young samurai 
 wanted indeed to say: 
 
 " And so you all believe my tale, do you? 
 Ha! ha! ha! It s nothing but a little joke, 
 a made-up story. I picked up this sack on 
 the bank of Katsura Eiver when I was 
 fishing there on a spring day." 
 
1 68 IROKA: 
 
 But he did not. 
 
 Suddenly Mazima Kumando rose on his 
 knees, and in a flash so quickly, indeed, 
 that his hand seemed a mere streak of blur 
 his sword was bare. 
 
 Those nearest him fell upon him, trying 
 to disarm him. One of them lost his life 
 in the attempt. Meanwhile the teller of 
 the tale escaped. 
 
 The eight million gods could not, if they 
 tried, make Mazima Kumando question 
 the purity of his wife for a moment. And 
 when the story was told and the tipsy men 
 laughed over it, and when the sack was 
 produced as the evidence, and men be 
 lieved the teller of the tale, there was 
 nothing for him to do but to wash the 
 insult offered to the stainless name of his 
 wife after the manner of the samurai. 
 And he did. 
 
 He was mortified at his sinful awkward 
 ness, and censured himself for it: there was 
 no excuse for him to have missed his foe. 
 
 He went home. At the entrance porch 
 of his house the servants announced, 
 " the august has returned! " Above the 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 169 
 
 steps an uplifted lantern welcomed him 
 home. And in this manner, his lady never 
 failed to meet him since their marriage. 
 
 " Eather early to-night, my lord/ she 
 remarked. 
 
 No answer. And when the light of the 
 lantern fell upon the ghost-whiteness of 
 his face: 
 
 "What, what is the matter, my hus 
 band? Something happened, I know. 
 Condescend to tell the humble one, I 
 pray you." 
 
 Of course the story the whole story 
 was told her at once; never a secret could 
 exist between Mazima and his wife. 
 
 " Madam, a man who murders the hon 
 our of a lady, a good wife, should die. 
 That is well. But the criminal awkward 
 ness of my hand! " he concluded. 
 
 She could not say anything. 
 
 She felt one thing: that her husband 
 had turned into a powerful magnet. And 
 it was no use she could not resist him. 
 Her knees pressed steadily toward him. 
 Also, without being conscious, her hands 
 were upon his arm; thrilling and in a tre- 
 
1 70 IR OKA : 
 
 mour they closed upon it tighter and 
 tighter. Her eyes were filled with flood; 
 and the depth of them seemed to recede 
 till one could not measure it. Shadows 
 mysterious gathered into them, and then, 
 all of a sudden, a flash or a spark scattered 
 them all into nothingness. A mortal 
 put on immortality: Lady Mazima was 
 soul. 
 
 Her husband had been a god to her. 
 Her heart was his shrine; but at the same 
 
 time And now that he had acted 
 
 like a god in his faith in her, she was 
 surprised. 
 
 " In the face of so suspicious an evi 
 dence," she said to herself, " does he 
 think that I m really a goddess, incapable 
 of a wrong? " 
 
 To be sure the lips of her husband had 
 never told her that she was a goddess the 
 extravagance of the oriental tongue does 
 not permit so extravagant an expression; 
 but nothing prevented him from telling 
 her so in his life-letters. You say women 
 are vain. It seems, however, that it was 
 the hardest thing in the world for Lady 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 171 
 
 Mazima to believe that she was divine in 
 the eyes of her husband. How could any 
 man without the eyes of a god trust her so 
 completely? 
 
 Her eyes burnt upon him. He, how 
 ever, at the time, seemed drowned in his 
 own thoughts. And in her eyes he became 
 a miracle. It was not very hard to see that 
 she had never been so happy and quite so 
 sad as she was then. The manliness of her 
 husband came upon her with a new mean 
 ing; and, at the same time, she realised 
 that her husband s life was numbered with 
 the dew of the morrow s field. 
 
 " Noble husband! 
 
 Her voice navigated through innumera 
 ble chokings and sobs. 
 
 "I will be honoured with a message 
 from our lord to-morrow," he quietly said. 
 She understood him, of course: he referred 
 to the rite of hara-kiri. 
 
 "Tell me, precious husband," she 
 begged, " that we will start together for 
 the Lotus-Land? You will allow me to 
 attend you through the dark paths, will 
 you not?" 
 
1 72 IROKA: 
 
 " Oh, no! The offender, madam, does 
 he not still live?" 
 
 And she begged his pardon. 
 
 " Sir, it will not be long," she assured 
 him. " You will wait for me in the shades 
 of the stars. And may all the Buddhas 
 grace be with my august beloved! " 
 
 II 
 
 Mazima Kumando became a heroic 
 memory in that samurai fashion which 
 does not seem to tell death from sleep. 
 All that the clan knew of the beautiful 
 young widow was that she begged her 
 father to come to her all the way from her 
 home clan in order that he might support 
 her in her sore hours, and that her father 
 came to her. Why not her mother instead 
 of her father? None knew. 
 
 And as the days of his stay heaped them 
 selves into many moons, the Kameyama 
 Clan the gossip and the curious in it, 
 I mean wondered if the father of the 
 widow, still at the prime of life, had no 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 173 
 
 special duty with the lord of his own 
 clan. 
 
 One Sugiyama, a young samurai, hap 
 pened to pass along the hedge of the 
 Mazima mansion one dark hour far be 
 yond midnight. The lights in the man 
 sion and the sounds he heard made him 
 halt sharply. 
 
 " Sword exercises fencing at this late 
 hour, upon my soul! rather at this crazy 
 early hour! And the woman s voice. The 
 widow s! " 
 
 Evidently his wit was not arranged with 
 an electric button. He sunk very deep in 
 thought. But at last: 
 
 " Why, of course the widow why, of 
 course! " 
 
 And so it came to pass that a chance 
 enlightened this young samurai far better 
 than the rest of the clans-people. 
 
 But a samurai has his code of honour; 
 and the secret was safe. 
 
 Now, the father of the widow was, per 
 haps, the best swordsman of his own clan. 
 Indeed, the horizon of his good lord s prov 
 ince was too narrow for his fame. That 
 
174 IROKA: 
 
 then, was the reason why the widow sought 
 consolation in her father. The superb 
 skill with the sword was the only thing 
 that could soothe her at that time not 
 sympathy alone. Every night when men 
 and things and most of the gods are said 
 to be asleep in the mystic hours, the 
 watchful stars saw the gentle lady spin 
 herself out of the cleverest web woven by 
 the swift sword-swing of her father. 
 
 Six months later 
 
 The widow was still in the very midst of 
 her mourning. And, therefore, the news 
 which flew throughout the Kameyama 
 Castle town, one fine autumn morning, 
 caught the people open-mouthed. 
 
 The widow had just sent her challenge 
 to Kaneko. 
 
 " The wife of a samurai ! " they all said, 
 smiling and deeply touched. And the 
 lord of the clan appointed the fifteenth of 
 the month for the day. 
 
 From that time people began to count 
 the passage of days impatiently. And at 
 last! 
 
 Around the field of honour, embracing 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 175 
 
 a huge circular space, stood a tall bamboo 
 fence. The samurais of the entire clan 
 were out in their ceremonial robes. They 
 were there, so many guardians of the 
 samurai honour. 
 
 Near the centre of the field sat two in 
 spectors, chosen by his highness the lord 
 of the clan. Time walked very slowly 
 that day. They were very impatient, the 
 spectators; at the same time they respected 
 the solemn weight of the occasion. The 
 silence that sat upon them was of death. 
 
 There was an undertow of whispered 
 murmurs and the people swayed as waves. 
 
 They caught sight of a slender young 
 lady. She was clad from head to heel in 
 silk, perfectly white- white as if her 
 Tcimono had fallen straight out of the skies 
 with the snow. The cascade of her hair 
 was tied with a single knot of classic sim 
 plicity and was thrown back, free to coquet 
 with every idle breeze. Her graceful 
 sleeves were caught up by the cord to 
 afford her arm free play. Her father 
 escorted her to the centre of the field. 
 He was her sponsor. 
 
176 1ROKA: 
 
 She was pale, and the stars were in her 
 eyes. Also she was very happy. For was 
 she not, this day, to avenge to the fullest 
 satisfaction of her heart the death of her 
 hushand ? 
 
 If she fell, that would not matter much. 
 For her father could not fail. There was, 
 therefore, nothing for her to fear. 
 
 Kaneko was also in white. The duel 
 was unto death. 
 
 The samurai is by nature gallant. A 
 woman s blood is the darkest stain on his 
 sword. But all was different with him 
 now. He was challenged on the field of 
 honour by a lady. And, therefore, to her 
 was due the respect of doing his utmost 
 not so much, perhaps, for his life, but for 
 the honour of his sword, to be true to the 
 code of the samurai. 
 
 She extended her bare arm made up 
 altogether of white curves of grace and bil 
 lowing with life and took her naginata 
 in her bud-like fist. The kisses of the sun 
 fell upon the lustre of her skin in stars. 
 
 Weapons in hand, they stood face to 
 face. And the beautiful young widow 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 177 
 
 swept him an exquisite and most irre 
 proachable courtesy. He returned it with 
 one above criticism. 
 
 The fatal signal word was cried. 
 
 Kaneko s sword met the crescent-like 
 head of her naginata with a suppressed sh I 
 
 Their eyes searched the depth of each 
 other s. Their stars froze. They had, to 
 all the eyes of the spectators, turned into 
 flint images; and one would have said 
 that a ghostly hand, too cunning for the 
 eyes of the flesh, was grasping their wea 
 pons rigidly, so that they could not move 
 them. 
 
 Thus for fully two minutes. However, 
 one could well afford to doubt, without 
 forfeiting his sense of humour, whether a 
 single one of the onlookers breathed half 
 a breath in all that time. 
 
 Then Kaneko, with the daring born of 
 death, cut in with a lightning stroke. All 
 of a sudden the young lady seemed to be 
 suspended in mid air; wrapping her was 
 the diaphanous blur of a silver halo. As 
 for the exact position of her arms and 
 her naginata, no naked eye could tell so 
 12 
 
178 1ROKA: 
 
 rapid was their movement. But Kaneko 
 was a good swordsman. With all that his 
 soul was chilled within him. The moon- 
 like sheen of the naginata flew faster than 
 a wing and searched the unguarded por 
 tions of his body like lightning gone mad. 
 
 It drove him into desperation. 
 
 Believing sincerely that he was making 
 a leap into the very arms of death, he 
 sprang in with a mad stroke. 
 
 A heavy thud! and literally the eye 
 balls of the spectators almost jerked their 
 heads off their shoulders in their hurry to 
 leap out of their sockets. 
 
 A sudden pause in the combat it was 
 so short, this pause, that you could not 
 measure it save with your imagination. 
 Long enough, however, it was for the eyes 
 to see that Kaneko s last stroke had told. 
 It had beheaded the naginata of the lady. 
 With a heavy thud it fell, that glittering 
 crescent head. 
 
 Before Kaneko could recover the posi 
 tion of his sword, the headless, but at the 
 same time sharp-cut, naginata handle 
 whistled; it flashed past his sword, and 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 179 
 
 A feminine voice rang clear: " The life 
 foe of my husband! " 
 
 Pierced deeply through the heart he lay; 
 and his life was tearing itself away from 
 him in gasps. 
 
 She stood mute over the fallen. Her 
 stainless grace towered over the stained 
 humiliation of her foe. 
 
 She clasped her hands; eyes closed. She 
 raised her face and arms slowly toward the 
 sun. Her lips trembled, and then tears 
 jewelled her eyelashes. She seemed to be 
 struggling to say something to some one 
 in heaven. 
 
 The whole concourse of people rose as 
 if hypnotised; they were afraid to breathe. 
 All eyes were on the white centre figure 
 with uplifted arms. 
 
 Just then was heard a sweet, mysterious, 
 far-away voice : 
 
 " Oh, husband! Oh, my husband! " 
 
 Her father caught the fainting body of 
 his daughter. 
 
The Death of a Ghost 
 
The Death of a Ghost 
 
 The Story of a Japanese Artist 
 
 The evening of an early summer day, 
 in those samurai days of Japan the 
 days of swords, of poetry, of romance, and 
 of pretty olive-skinned coquettes and of 
 cherry blossoms. 
 
 Looking toward the west, you could see 
 the bedclothes of the sun on both sides of 
 Fuji-yama. One would have said of the 
 sunset clouds that some rude hands must 
 have massacred angels without number 
 and so outrageously they were stained, 
 those clouds, with blood of much richer 
 brightness of red than that of mortals, 
 and also they were covered with snowy 
 downs.- 
 
1 84 1ROKA: 
 
 Mimura Kaneyoshi was staring at the 
 sunset. Mimura was an artist, and those 
 who knew him and his passion for the 
 beautiful would doubtless have taken it 
 for granted that the camera obscura of his 
 eyes was busy photographing the picture. 
 Nothing of the sort, however. What he 
 was trying to do was to cut a feminine 
 kimono out of the heap of gauze, out of 
 that chaos of glory that was colour, with 
 all the critical refinement of an artist, for 
 her for Satono Fuji. 
 
 Of her nothing unkindly could be said. 
 But she could tell a thing or two to some 
 of her sisters and most of her brother 
 men who, in their ignorant beatitude, 
 dream that the beauty of a person is one of 
 those things which go to the making of 
 a woman s happiness. Her head was cov 
 ered with that lacquer-like night, full of 
 light, which the Chinese poets are fond 
 of calling " verdant hair." No poniard 
 points were in her eyes which smiled as 
 kindly as the bud-like lips under the pink 
 vibration of her nostrils. The exquisite 
 oval of her cheeks was soft to the eye, 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 185 
 
 wrapped in its velvety floss, white as the 
 new-born snow. 
 
 " The second coming of Onono Ko- 
 machi! " some of her friends declared. 
 
 " In her former existence she must have 
 been one of the white lotus blossoms in the 
 sacred pond of the Buddha-Land," others 
 believed. 
 
 " I am afraid of her/ the irreverent re 
 marked, referring to a manifestation of the 
 fox- woman; "no mere woman can be as 
 fair as she is, you know! " 
 
 Without blaming Mimura for how 
 could they; is there anything more natu 
 ral for an idolater of the Beautiful than to 
 fall at the feet of 0-Fuji? they shook 
 their heads sidewise over the marriage 
 of the artist and this beautiful woman. 
 Why? they themselves did not know that 
 any more than the mystery of their own 
 being. None the less, they were perfectly 
 sure of the correctness of their judgment. 
 
 " She is so beautiful, and you know 
 him! " they all said. 
 
 Indeed, the name of Mimura stood for 
 many things diverse, contradictory things 
 
1 86 1ROKA: 
 
 sometimes. He was one of those strange 
 guests of earth called genius that amus 
 ingly solemn mixture of a child and a 
 thunderstorm with entirely too much 
 nerves than are convenient to be comfort 
 able in this world, so full of shocks; one 
 who foolishly insists and persists in insist 
 ing that this life of beefsteak and butter is 
 a festival of the gods. A samurai by birth; 
 but the iron cage of ceremonial codes and 
 the Spartan rigour of military training 
 were not quite to his taste. The little re 
 public of Yedo artists at that time that 
 charming Bohemia of laughter, of sak6, of 
 sharp-witted cynicism came to him and 
 offered him a heaven where his fancy could 
 wing as high as it pleased; also it offered 
 him a brush which would, if he but could, 
 bring down the whole universe of stars; 
 and not only that, but also the kingdom of 
 man s emotions as well as the kingdom of 
 heaven, upon his canvas. Caring nothing 
 for dignity and rank, and longing above 
 everything for the association of the gods 
 and of perfect freedom, he made haste to 
 enter the realm where man-made rank was 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 187 
 
 a target-doll at which men flung all im 
 aginable ridicule and laughter. So he 
 was a Bohemian: very fond of sak^ too 
 fond of his art. And I defy any one ex 
 cept Fuji, of course to convince him that 
 a blameless., tailor-made dress is at least 
 as good,, if not a trifle better, than his rags. 
 No lords of elder memory despised money 
 as heartily as he did. At the same time 
 as is so often the case with men of art 
 he had a vivid imagination: he used it 
 and he abused it, this godlike power. 
 When he married beautiful 0-Fuji, he did 
 not mean to wed a Hades at the same time. 
 But the fact stands obstinate it was his 
 jealousy, his savage, unrestrained jealousy, 
 that acquainted him for the first time with 
 a darker world than this. 
 
 But as good Providence would have it, 
 Fuji was as sensible and wifely as she 
 was a goddess in the most sacred niche in 
 the temple called Beautiful. To make this 
 impossible miracle of a woman still more 
 wonderful, she was as true, even in her 
 imagination, as the North Star. But, of 
 course, she would not be human without 
 
1 88 1ROKA: 
 
 having something which would rivet her 
 perfection, so to speak, down to earth. 
 That one thing was very far from being a 
 fault rather a virtue, indeed. Knowing 
 how sensitive Mimura was, she wanted to 
 shield him from all possible annoyances. 
 And so it came to pass, in the course of 
 not a long time, that she had a secret or 
 two of her own secrets that he did not 
 share. 
 
 Very absent-mindedly, one fine morning 
 with his head full of charming colours 
 and glories of the field May had been 
 painting upon it for twenty days Mimura 
 walked into his little cottage home. A 
 man s voice was saying something. He 
 also heard his wife s voice: 
 
 " He mustn t have the slightest ghost of 
 suspicion of all this not the slightest." 
 
 " Depend on me! " 
 
 It was his brother s voice, this mascu 
 line sound. It was as though the last par 
 ticle of his blood seemed, all of a sud 
 den, to have been driven into his heart. 
 Trembling with a sinister earthquake of 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 189 
 
 the soul, almost breathless, with a terrible 
 calm on his petrified features, he turned 
 away. Eeally, he was afraid of himself. 
 No, he could not retain his self-control 
 to listen to them longer. 
 
 " Is it possible? Is it really? Ah! I 
 have thought of it all the time what a 
 fool, what an ass I am! " 
 
 In his studio, upon which he had just 
 turned his back, the conversation between 
 his wife and his brother went on uninter 
 rupted, without a shadow of a suspicion of 
 what was taking place in the heart of that 
 artist walking away down the sunny street, 
 looking very much like a doomed spirit 
 departing from the land of Light. 
 
 "You see/ said beautiful Fuji, "my 
 precious husband is sensitive, just like all 
 other great men all the bright children 
 of high heaven. And it is a crime to an 
 noy him with the humdrum of life. Be 
 lieve me, brother, I would sooner commis 
 sion a god to attend to the purchase of 
 muddy radishes. No, no! I can t bear 
 it. Everything I can do to shield him is 
 the sweetest work of my life. Nothing 
 
190 1ROKA: 
 
 makes me happier. But you see I could 
 not attend to this money matter myself; 
 and you are always so good. I really don t 
 know what I would do without you! " 
 
 "As you say, sister yes! I am ever at 
 your service. I quite agree with you about 
 my brother. But heavens! what a tre 
 mendous partiality of the God of Luck 
 to have a wife like you! " 
 
 After that, there were occasions when 
 the enthusiastic exaltation of his wife over 
 his artistic efforts fell upon the ears of 
 Mimura like an echo from an empty cav 
 ern. And the child-thunderstorm sulked. 
 All this not quite two years after their 
 marriage. 
 
 II 
 
 " Hei, old chap!" cried Inouye after 
 Mimura one day; "a big streak of luck, 
 old boy! Come with me my treat, my 
 treat! Come! 
 
 There was just one man in all the happy 
 Bohemia of saJcS and wit with whom Mi- 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 191 
 
 mura enjoyed his cup: that was Inouye 
 all others were too weak for him. 
 
 " What s up now ? You did not rob any 
 one?" 
 
 " Yes; but only a fool, so it doesn t mat 
 ter. That picture of a pine tree, you re 
 member a worthless daub of mine? " 
 
 " Yes." The tone of his voice made 
 it exceedingly ambiguous to what " yes " 
 referred. 
 
 " I sold it to a fool of a daimyo. Now 
 then, listen ! Under a blushing cherry, to 
 the music of nightingales if you insist on 
 being poetical. Honourably condescend? " 
 
 "No! oh, no!" 
 
 "No? Well, I d be That s the 
 
 first time you ve declined an offer of 
 that sort. What god has anathematised 
 you?" 
 
 " None." 
 
 "What then, in heaven s name, is the 
 matter with you?" 
 
 " Oh, well, you never give me enough 
 you tickle my thirst into madness and 
 leave it unquenched every time." 
 
 " Aha, ha! old chap, don t I know you, 
 
192 IROKA: 
 
 you bottomless Shojyo! I will fix you this 
 time, old man you just wait. I have just 
 bought a cask of shyochyu. How s that ? " 
 
 Inouye smiled. Nobody can call shyo 
 chyu weak, it is almost pure alcohol. 
 
 "Hum! a cask of shyocliyu! that s 
 not enough for a sitting." 
 
 "What! I ll bet you twenty pieces of 
 silver that you can t dry it at two sittings, 
 that cask of shyochyu." 
 
 " Nonsense! I lay you two to one that 
 I will see its bottom at a sitting." 
 
 " Heavens! if I didn t know what a 
 merry liar you are! " 
 
 " Out with your twenty pieces of silver, 
 then, if your purse is so anxious to throw 
 off its burden! " 
 
 So they went. In the tepid twilight of 
 the spring day, sweet and heavy with all 
 sorts of voluptuous fragrance, they drank 
 far into the night. And a wonder came 
 to pass: at last the cask was empty. Mi- 
 mura gathered the silver heap, shining like 
 corroded moonlight, and pocketed it. 
 
 " Look here, Mimura, you better stay 
 just where you are to-night. I will let you 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 193 
 
 go back early in the morning. You must 
 go home? You may never get home, 
 man! " 
 
 "Aha! ha! I I? There is plenty 
 room for another cask of shyochyu here. 
 Ha, ha, ha! Can t walk? What do you 
 mean, berabo? Can t stand up? Go to! 
 Get me a baby carriage then. You think 
 I ought to be rocked to sleep in a cradle. 
 What do you take me for? " 
 
 In spite of the daring declaration, Mi- 
 mura did not know when or how he was 
 taken home to his all-anxious wife. 
 
 Those were the days when the trick 
 called artificial respiration was unknown. 
 They knew very little of the paralysing 
 effect of alcohol on the cardiac nerves. In 
 the arms of beautiful Fuji her husband 
 was a corpse there was no sign of breath 
 ing; no beat of heart. 
 
 At once she sent for her brother-in-law; 
 doctors also. But, of course, an eminent 
 physician was beyond the reach of their 
 circumstances. Mimura was beyond the 
 cunning of medicine, the physicians said. 
 
 There was nothing to be done on the 
 13 
 
194 IROKA: 
 
 following day but to prepare him for 
 burial. 
 
 When the day was done, and the melan 
 choly of night began to fall, Fuji s excess 
 of grief alarmed the brother of the dead. 
 
 " Sister, you must rest a while. Sleep 
 a while if you can; you will break down, 
 you know." 
 
 " Oh, no, brother, I must watch through 
 the night! Oh, my husband! " 
 
 Giving way, all of a sudden, she wept, 
 wept, wept. 
 
 At last she raised her head: " Leave me 
 now, brother, will you not? I want to be 
 alone with my husband a while/ 
 
 Her sorrow was something very strong. 
 He was not so sure of her sanity now 
 something might happen any time. No, 
 he could not leave her with her husband 
 alone. 
 
 " All alone with the dead? You know, 
 madam, I cannot do that. Let me call in 
 one of the lady neighbours to watch with 
 you?" 
 
 " Oh, no, no! I want to be alone with 
 him." 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 195 
 
 And then smiling through her tears: 
 " Will you not humour me this once ? " 
 
 It was rather late midnight was not 
 very far ahead of them. Sad rain was fall 
 ing outside. The chilly, death-like fingers 
 of the damp night stole into the cottage 
 through the amado. They shivered. 
 
 " You must not stay in this room, if you 
 insist on staying up." 
 
 " Oh, please! 
 
 But her brother-in-law would not hear 
 of it almost dragged her out of the room 
 of death. A candle was left to keep its 
 lonely vigil over the pallor of the corpse. 
 
 Silent, with her chin in her dress collar, 
 her eyes covered with her hands thus she 
 let the midnight pass over her head. 
 
 Silence; and the rain breaking it with 
 its melancholy tread, and winds also with 
 their sobs, making it much more silent. 
 Her brother-in-law, completely forgot by 
 her, was keeping a dragon s watch over the 
 beautiful wife of his dead brother. By- 
 and-bye, when he was thinking that her 
 sorrow rocked her, baby-fashion, into a 
 doze, she gently let fall her hands from 
 
196 IRQKA: 
 
 her eyes, and, without looking at him, she 
 said: 
 
 " Good brother, I have prayed to the 
 Buddhas: they understand my heart now. 
 I am quite ready to go and join them and 
 my husband. I do not want him to journey 
 far in the shadow-land alone without me. 
 I am going to race after him, so I can catch 
 him in a short time. As you see, I am 
 going to leave my mother and sisters with 
 you. Tell them, when you shall see them 
 in their far-away home, that I went away 
 with my husband as all true wives should 
 do. You will do this for me, will you 
 not? Will you promise me, brother?" 
 
 He did not answer her could not speak. 
 It was a custom of the time with a high- 
 minded woman of the samurai class, to 
 think it a shame to survive her husband, 
 especially when there were no children and 
 no expressed will of her husband to that 
 effect. Her brother-in-law understood her 
 perfectly. He was a samurai; and sooner 
 would he have robbed her of her virtue 
 than to have prevented her performance of 
 this rite, at once the token of undivided, 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 197 
 
 all-absorbing love for her husband and 
 also of that philosophic conviction that 
 the casting aside of this robe of flesh could 
 never touch her real life. It was the last 
 sacrament of honour. Moreover, she had 
 no longing to live and why should she 
 have? The centre and end of her life 
 was cold in the shroud, and to chain her 
 to this life of earth would have been one of 
 the most atrocious of cruelties. No, he 
 would not do that, her brother-in-law. 
 
 From between her girdle she took out a 
 short sword, such as the samurai women 
 of old Japan used to carry. She drew it; 
 placed it in front of her. 
 
 "Brother/ she said again. And she 
 raised her face. And that was the first 
 time that he saw, in the blood-like, uncer 
 tain light of the candle, her features wet 
 with tears. 
 
 Dews rarely spoil a really beautiful 
 flower. This brother of the artist had the 
 same adoration for the beautiful. And 
 the sight of this beautiful woman, with 
 the cold, moonlike sheen of the blade at 
 her knees ah! The storm of emotion 
 
198 1ROKA: 
 
 whirled him up to a height: it made him 
 dizzy. He naturally forgot himself. 
 
 " Oh, sister," he groaned. 
 
 There was such a strange ring to that 
 wail of his soul that, absorbed and obliv 
 ious to all else in her meditation as she was, 
 it distracted her attention for a second. 
 She raised her white hand and waved back 
 his, which would have seized the sword. 
 Then she sat facing the corner of the ad 
 joining room where her husband lay cold, 
 and prepared herself, as was often done in 
 those days, to address her monologue to 
 her departed lover. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the room of death, the 
 damp chill of midnight was taking in 
 charge the shrouded artist the forsaken 
 of physicians. 
 
 When he came to himself, Mimura 
 asked his mind something, he himself 
 could not tell what it was; his mind, very 
 naturally, took it as a joke and disdained 
 to answer. He thought that he heard a 
 voice of a man. The lonely candle was 
 almost dying. But still in its funereal 
 light he could see things which were f amil- 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 199 
 
 iar to him. This was his own cottage. 
 How did it happen that he was lying here? 
 Heavens! what could be the matter with 
 him? He did not know; he felt very stu 
 pid. "Without asking what made him feel 
 so, he gave himself up to languor. Then 
 he heard: 
 
 " In your love, and in that alone, I have 
 
 had my being " There was a choking 
 
 sob and then silence. A feminine voice! 
 Yes, that was her voice, there was no doubt 
 of it his beautiful Fuji s voice. Wide 
 awake in a flash, he softly raised himself on 
 his elbow. What was this? Can it be 
 possible? He was dressed like a corpse 
 all in white. Great stars! was he waking 
 in the land of the Lotus after crossing the 
 Sanzu Eiver unconsciously ? But his 
 wife s voice! And more than ever, he was 
 sure that this was his own cottage home. 
 Why, there was one of his favourite pic 
 tures hanging on the wall as in the days 
 of his earthly sojourn. 
 
 Then the same sweet voice, but which 
 was this time very much more tremulous 
 and fuller of tears, rose again: 
 
200 1ROKA: 
 
 " Unworthy as it was, I have given my 
 all to you my heart and all every 
 thought of my mind. Oh, how I loved 
 and worshipped you, sweet lover! " 
 
 Her brother-in-law could hold out no 
 longer. 
 
 "AhJcorS! 0-Fuji-san!" 
 
 When Mimura recognised his brother s 
 voice, he turned all of a sudden into a 
 black fiend. He was struck with a wicked 
 lightning, which brought a stupendous 
 enlightenment in its lurid glare. 
 
 So his brother and beautiful Fuji 
 plotted his death! Great heavens! They 
 had killed him with a black magic. And 
 there in his own very cottage, under the 
 roof he had raised with his own hands, as 
 it were, to shelter her flower-like beauty, 
 she was vowing her eternal and ever-con 
 stant love to his brother! And that, too, 
 with his body wrapped in its shroud in the 
 very next room! His fury raised him like 
 a ghost flame to his feet. He would tear 
 out the vitals of the unnatural murderers 
 and traitors of his faith! 
 
 " Death can t divide us, my love! " the 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 201 
 
 soft voice said again. So the silence was 
 broken and the sobbing voice smote upon 
 Mimura s ears; and at the same time a 
 savage blow from an unseen hand struck 
 upon his naked heart. It felled him to the 
 floor. 
 
 At the sound of the fall, the midnight 
 nirvana of the adjoining room was also 
 torn by two exclamations one masculine 
 and the other feminine; but which were so 
 mingled that one would have said that 
 they came from one mouth. There was a 
 rush of feet, the impatient tearing aside of 
 the shoji. The prostrate shroud was on its 
 feet in an instant. 
 
 They rushed in Fuji with her bare 
 sword, her brother-in-law at her heels. 
 
 At the sight of the white apparition, 
 they seemed to have turned into stone. 
 Then they sunk as if they were decaying, 
 rather than melting, prostrate upon the 
 floor. 
 
 Before them there stood a ghost, and 
 never in the most horrifying romance was 
 a shadow of the dead so fiendish. The 
 pale features of Mimura were knotted as 
 
202 IROKA: 
 
 the fingers of Chaos in agony. Looking 
 at the fire in his eyes., one would have said 
 that hell opened two holes upon this 
 world. With such a head above the spec 
 tral whiteness of the loose robe of the dead, 
 who could doubt that he was a ghost if 
 ever there was one? 
 
 " Oh, husband! Oh, husband, mine! " 
 Fuji cried. She had heard often of the 
 dead coming back to earth to call to him 
 his companion. 
 
 " Oh, husband, husband! You came 
 for me. Oh, how happy I am! I will be 
 with you at once. Here, love, take me! " 
 
 The keen, cool blade entered her throat. 
 Fuji bowed to death with her beauty and 
 life also in a heap of gory kimono. 
 
 But the ghost did not see this. 
 
 Mimura rushed upon his prostrate 
 brother a starving lion would have had 
 more manners than this furious ghost. 
 Seizing him by his hair, Mimura threw his 
 brother on his back. With his right knee 
 upon his chest, and before the hands of 
 the victim thought of a struggle, he sunk 
 his teeth into his brother s throat, 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 203 
 
 "Uh!" Then all was silent the 
 stiffening of limbs. They tightened more 
 and more, his teeth, till finally they met 
 through the flesh of his brother s throat. 
 
 Then they became rigid. 
 
 A certain intensity of emotion always 
 snaps the life-thread in two. 
 
 And Mimura,, too, was dead. 
 
A Dream on Suwa-Yama 
 
A Dream on Suwa-Yama 
 
 Here I am in a land of bricks, money, 
 and oaths. And if the milk of human 
 kindness does by no means flow in river 
 beds here, there is surely no lack of the 
 milk of cows. And the sun does not have 
 any more clouds to hide behind, nor the 
 stars and the moon any more tears to shed 
 than they do in any other quarter of this 
 sad dirt-ball. 
 
 Nevertheless, Nature seems to take a 
 special delight in reminding a fellow such 
 as I, homeless as a whim of wind, that he 
 is a stranger here; that he is an intruder. 
 And do what I may, there will come per 
 sistently the hour when my eyes will close, 
 not because of any too much light for 
 it is very apt to happen in the classic hour 
 
208 IROKA: 
 
 of twilight-pensiveness and through the 
 half-closed eyes I am made to see, not 
 the embodiment of the most advanced sci 
 entific theory of light, but a rustic cottage 
 which an old pine tree used to pat on its 
 shoulder, grandmother-fashion, there on 
 the lap of Suwa-Hill, with its checkered 
 apron of many-coloured flowers; by the 
 lake which is called (most likely because it 
 never disappointed the moon in giving her 
 the perfect silver image of herself even on 
 a stormy night, so still is it) the Mirror 
 of Luna, and within the sound of a cas 
 cade, that never-ceasing dancer with the 
 bridal veil of mists. 
 
 And the cottage has a story. 
 
 II 
 
 Not very long after the overthrow of the 
 Tokugawa Shogunate, and the removal of 
 the national capital from Kioto to Tokio 
 (that is to say, in the early days of our for 
 eign intercourse), we came to the port of 
 Kobe, and because we had but one request 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 209 
 
 to make of our fellow-creatures namely, 
 to be left alone to enjoy the perfect quie 
 tude we took possession of an out-of-the- 
 world cottage in the bosom of Suwa-yama 
 my mother and I. 
 
 My mother, it may make the story 
 clearer to state, was a very sad woman. 
 In the same battle, on the same historic 
 night, her husband and her brother had 
 passed from this earth leaving behind a 
 very gallant memory and that only. 
 
 The revolution came and the change of 
 many things: among others, the loss of our 
 fortune estate, treasures, and all. Hav 
 ing none to care for save her son, with 
 nothing wherewith to enjoy even the 
 ephemeral pleasures of life, my mother pre 
 sented a traditional mask of samurai stoi 
 cism against the world, and abandoned 
 herself without resistance to perpetual sad 
 ness, loneliness of heart, and longing after 
 the spirit of the dead. 
 
 That she remained even for a day on 
 earth after the death of my father was a 
 great proof of her love for me. And an 
 other token of her affection was the great 
 14 
 
210 1RQKA: 
 
 pains she took in instructing me in the 
 graceful classics of our art-intoxicated an 
 cestors, and the volumes wherein the most 
 beautiful, as well as the wisest, fruits of 
 China s culture had been treasured. 
 
 By a mere accident, a kakemono of Okyo, 
 with the picture of a carp ascending a fall 
 upon it, was found at the bottom of my 
 mother s nagamochi: and we managed to 
 exchange it for a small plot of land and a 
 cow a bargain which must have brought 
 to the shrewd business man at least four 
 or five thousand yen. We did not regret 
 it. I, because I did not care for or know 
 the value of the picture, and loved the cow 
 and that dimple of Suwa-yama which I 
 took such a pleasure in cultivating with 
 her; and my mother, because a vigorous 
 bud or two of crimson, which the mountain 
 air and the exercise wooed to bloom on my 
 once death-pale cheeks, were fairer to her 
 than all the cherry blossoms of Yoshino. 
 And the days came and went to the quiet, 
 sleepy music of the belfry of a Buddhist 
 temple which was our nearest neighbour. 
 
 The singing of the birds, the sighing of 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 21 1 
 
 the winds through the pine needles, the 
 lullabies of the cicadas in the drowsy hour 
 of summer and the hush after the snow 
 had smothered everything to death all 
 these, somehow or other, gave my mother s 
 lips sweeter and more frequent smiles. 
 
 Ill 
 
 One would have said that she was amus 
 ing herself, if he had watched my mother 
 clothe me, on my eighteenth birthday, in 
 the ceremonial robes of my father. But 
 the truth is that she was in her most sol 
 emn mood. And although the law of the 
 country forbade samurai to wear a sword 
 any longer, yet on that morning she made 
 me carry the two favourite swords of my 
 father. And naturally I was the proudest 
 of mortals; and as for my mother, she was, 
 if possible, somewhat prouder than I. 
 
 As I was about to step out to greet the 
 sun in my new dignity, at the very thresh 
 old of the cottage I saw a stranger, and in 
 a second more, following close behind her, 
 
212 IROKA: 
 
 another who was a greater stranger than 
 the first. 
 
 Both were ladies. To scurry mouse- 
 fashion was not compatible with my kami- 
 shimo and the swords; and so,, with a 
 greater moral courage than any one would 
 be willing to give me credit for, I stood 
 my ground. 
 
 "Pardon me/ said the stranger, the 
 first lady. "We were not aware upon 
 whom we were intruding." 
 
 "Be good enough to overlook the 
 strange madness of the humble one s at 
 tire," said I, with the first breath which 
 came to me, and explained as briefly as I 
 could the circumstances of my birthday 
 and my mother s whim on that occasion. 
 The lady, who was a Japanese woman, 
 expressed her delight at what she called 
 "this unexpected pleasure," and asking 
 me to excuse her, she turned to her com 
 panion, who was not one of our country 
 women, and spoke long with her. It was 
 not hard reading from their eyes that the 
 theme of their chat was either myself or 
 our cottage, and seeing the brightness of 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 213 
 
 the steel-blue eyes, and hearing the bird- 
 like notes of her exclamations, I marvelled 
 much at what interest she might be able 
 to find in a character like me, in a cottage 
 like ours. 
 
 " We have been wandering/ explained 
 the Japanese lady, who evidently was the 
 interpreter and companion of her of the 
 sunbeam locks, " for many, many a day in 
 your neighbourhood. What a charming 
 spot this is." 
 
 "We think that Nature is especially 
 gracious to us here, even to the point of 
 prodigality." 
 
 "And you two, alone, the honourable 
 presence and your august mother, occupy 
 this cottage? It might as well house five 
 or six more, might it not ? " 
 
 "As your honourable judgment, the 
 cottage is quite too large for us. Never 
 theless, finding it better so than to have it 
 too small, we try to teach ourselves not to 
 quarrel with the existing condition of 
 things." 
 
 And I smiled. 
 
 Meanwhile, I confess, I was never so 
 
214 1ROKA: 
 
 nervous in all my life before. I felt that 
 the lovely eyes of the white stranger were 
 burning into every inch of my face. And 
 I could not help thinking within myself 
 what a curious person she must be. Still, 
 I justified her easily enough on the ground 
 of my extraordinary dress and swords. 
 
 The young lady interpreter turned away 
 from me to her foreign companion. I 
 stood charmed as a cobra by the sound of 
 their voices what a fascination there is 
 in a voice whose utterance is beyond the 
 comprehension of one s mind. 
 
 However, it was not long before all the 
 secrets of the magic tongue were mine. 
 The two ladies were very anxious to spend 
 some time away from people, from the wail 
 of the murdering civilisation, in the cool 
 of the mountain shades, by the silver rib 
 bons of runnels. Would we let them share 
 the cottage with us? The food? Why, 
 they would attend to that themselves. 
 
 " Will you kindly call again to-morrow? 
 Meanwhile, I will consult the pleasure of 
 my mother." 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 215 
 
 IV 
 
 I talked with my mother about it. 
 There must have been something in my 
 tone, for there came a sad smile upon her 
 lips half playful, half reproachful, and 
 which seemed to say, " Are you not satis 
 fied with your mother? " As I became 
 more and more enthusiastic in my talk, 
 that smile opened reluctantly much after 
 the manner of an orchid bloom which, 
 under the coaxing caresses of a warm and 
 glad spring breeze, blossoms out from the 
 mosses of the time-pensive grey of the 
 rocks. And, when you come to think 
 about it, there was nothing so very strange 
 in it all. I knew my mother well; but she 
 was the only woman who was known to me, 
 and as for the great world, whistling, 
 laughing, whining, and cursing about me, 
 I knew nothing of it. And you will not 
 blame me if for months and months I 
 never could run away from the idea that 
 the young lady with the face of the colour 
 of dawn, and, like it, soft, dreamy, chaste, 
 
2l6 IROKA: 
 
 with the dainty bits of southern sky for her 
 eyes and an aureole for her hair, must have 
 rained from some happy cloud for the edi 
 fication and comfort of us all she must 
 have been sent to us, mother and me, 
 through the mercy of the gods. And the 
 thought made me happy more than I can 
 tell. For we have prayed often. And of 
 all the pleasures of earth there is none, 
 perhaps, so complete as that which comes 
 from the assurance that our prayers are 
 heard and approved by the Divine. For 
 it at once proves the existence of the gods; 
 the gracious goodness and sweetness of 
 their nature; the tender love of the Divine 
 toward the human, and the oneness in 
 that we could make our feelings felt by 
 Him of the Great Eternal and man; and 
 that this ridiculous atom of dirt is, after 
 all, a god playing a fool. And in all can 
 dour, are these not, when you sift the 
 matter to its heart, the great corner-stone 
 upon which the edifice of human happi 
 ness is reared? 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 217 
 
 My mother, I well knew, would suffer 
 and bear almost all the known and un 
 known things for my sake to make me 
 happy. For me she would have stepped 
 down into Hades with the sweetest of 
 smiles. With all that I had much of mis 
 giving about the coming of the ladies to 
 live with us. 
 
 My mother was of the race that knew 
 the foreigners as " red-bearded barba 
 rians," and so proud were they of the older 
 Japan that they would sooner, very much 
 sooner, have committed hara-kiri than to 
 pollute, as they thought, body and soul 
 by social contact with the foreigner. At 
 the same time I was not completely de 
 serted by Hope. For, indeed, was I not 
 myself reared on the very milk of the con 
 servative Japan? Had I ever heard a 
 single favourable word about the white 
 stranger? Never. And yet had I not 
 felt such a melting affinity toward her; 
 had not my eyes forgot that the visible 
 
218 1ROKA: 
 
 universe was not quite comprehended by 
 the graceful lines of her figure and fea 
 tures? If it was so with me, why not with 
 my mother? And then, too, there seemed 
 no trace of anger upon her when I had 
 mentioned the matter, and that faint smile 
 of hers! 
 
 The young lady interpreter came the 
 next day; and as she wished to see my 
 mother alone, I left them together and 
 went out to plough. 
 
 On my way home from the field I 
 thought that I heard some one calling my 
 name. Turning round I saw a white hand 
 winnowing the sun-bright air. 
 
 " We will see you to-morrow morning, 
 Narumi-san." 
 
 And I saw standing, framed in a patch 
 of yellow rape, the figure of the inter 
 preter. 
 
 At home: "I gave my consent to the 
 ladies. Is it agreeable with you, Masao ? " 
 my mother said to me. 
 
 That night, after our evening meal, as 
 we sat by the hearth and watched many 
 marvellous mystic pictures which the 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 219 
 
 flame rising and falling limned on the 
 crepuscular canvas of the room, my 
 mother told me the brief story of the 
 white stranger, as she had heard from 
 the interpreter. 
 
 VI 
 
 She was a daughter of America a Vir 
 ginian by birth. She was very unhappy. 
 Under other circumstances she might have 
 been famous. For her unhappiness came 
 from the ardent adoration of the beautiful 
 that was her God. Like a female Co 
 lumbus, and of a far higher and more dar 
 ing ambition, she launched out on her 
 voyage of discovery she would find her 
 God! Life was kind to her. Wealth, 
 beauty, health, liberty were all hers. And 
 there she was in Japan, still on her pil 
 grimage, after having worshipped at the 
 shrines of the European masters. She had 
 been in Japan already for one year and a 
 half, wandering about from a temple to a 
 palace; from a godown to a castle, and all 
 the while calling back to life, with the 
 
220 IROKA: 
 
 magic touch of her idolatrous fire for art, 
 a piece of brown parchment, a fragment of 
 a fusuma, a broken cornice, a tattered 
 kakemono, a mutilated image, a torn wall 
 upon which laboured our ancestors, who 
 had forgot meat and raiment for a brush 
 or a chisel and who had deemed it the wis 
 est thing on earth to condense the life of 
 fifty years within a compass of a few feet. 
 At last this lady who was so hard to please 
 found something or rather a vision was 
 born within her or to quote her own 
 words, " a star fell into my dream as it had 
 fallen into that of the Blessed Maya, who 
 had given birth to Gotama Buddha." She 
 would give colour and form to this, her 
 dream. Like the swordsmiths of Japan, 
 who used to purify with complex cere 
 monies their workshops as well as them 
 selves before addressing themselves to the 
 sacred work, she would bury herself in this 
 kindly temple of Nature; in this solitary 
 cottage with us; in the studio whose screens 
 are green hills and whose flower-carpeted 
 floor is seamed by the mountain rills. 
 Her name was Viola Kandolph. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 221 
 
 VII 
 
 Miss Eandolph and her companion, 
 whose name was Sakabe Toki, came into 
 our cottage, and it became, to all appear 
 ances, the tryst of summer and winter. I 
 mean this: In the rooms of my mother, 
 there was that severe simplicity of elder 
 Japan; in the apartments of our friends 
 every inch of the wall, aye, the very ceil 
 ing, was covered with pictures, objets 
 d art gathered from all over the world, 
 with colours that were a defiance to the 
 brightness of the sun. Two extremes 
 were thus brought together, and the effect 
 of the contrast was startling. 
 
 "What do you think of their rooms? " 
 I asked of my mother. And, to confess 
 the truth, I expected her to say something 
 complimentary, but which would, in real 
 ity, mean that it was as rich as a curio 
 shop. 
 
 " It is very marvellous," she said, with 
 a ring of sincerity in her voice. " I won- 
 
222 IROKA: 
 
 der if it is her own character which she 
 has tesselated in that medley of colours 
 and things? Her room impressed me as 
 a person a strong, passionate, delicate 
 character which is mad because it cannot 
 express itself freely, naturally. Above all, 
 her room as it is, is not a thing! " 
 
 This, coming from my mother, was a 
 compliment which I certainly did not 
 dream any mortal could deserve. 
 
 My mother took a trip of discovery into 
 the bottom of her nagamocJii a long 
 trunk and out of many rolls of kake 
 mono, she took one. 
 
 " Take this to Miss Kandolph, and pre 
 sent it with the sincere esteem of your 
 mother/ 
 
 VIII 
 
 The moon was white one night, and the 
 path climbing the hill in front of our 
 cottage was silver. I was returning home 
 with a bunch of flowers night blooms, 
 whose eyes are too modest for the glare of 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 223 
 
 the sun, so that to see them wake one has 
 to go to the cliff with the fall of the dews. 
 
 And I came upon her seated on a moss- 
 cushioned rock; she was looking into the 
 lake. "Upon it many a pale hieroglyphic 
 was thrown down from the stars and the 
 moon. And she, like a prophetess, seemed 
 to be reading the mystic message. I stood 
 still, mute as a devotee before a goddess. 
 How I would have loved to offer the 
 bunch of flowers and a prayer. But, of 
 course, I could not speak a word of Eng 
 lish, and I was ignorant as to the extent of 
 her knowledge in the Japanese. Still had 
 I the daring (curse my timidity!) we might 
 have managed to make ourselves under 
 stood. Then an idea came to me. Let 
 me resort to the speech of the eyes. 
 
 " Miss Kandolph," said I, with a voice 
 as slender and tremulous as the rill pour 
 ing its silver threads into the lake. 
 
 She started nervously, turned round, 
 and, when she recognised me, smiled 
 gently at me. 
 
 " A beautiful evening, sir," said she in 
 Japanese. I meant to hold out the flow- 
 
224 IROKA: 
 
 ers. But all of a sudden I forgot it com 
 pletely as I saw her face. 
 
 Silence incomprehensible delirium. 
 
 I stammered out something in Japanese, 
 and, suddenly remembering my flowers, I 
 offered them to her. 
 
 " Thank you such beautiful flowers! " 
 
 IX 
 
 After that, there was it might have 
 been all my fancy a strange light in her 
 eyes. And whenever my gaze met hers, 
 my eyes always dropped to the floor, and 
 untimely maple leaves spread themselves 
 on my cheeks. 
 
 Half a year had passed since the ladies 
 came to bloom under our cottage roof. 
 One fine morning I was starting out to 
 gather a bundle of fagots. 
 
 " Wait, I will go with you," she called 
 from the veranda. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 225 
 
 Under the shade of a pine I gathered a 
 cushion of pine needles for her to sit down 
 and rest while I gathered my dry branches. 
 
 " How I love this life! I wish I could 
 live this way all my days! " 
 
 " And if you would let me be by your 
 side,, I would be the happiest boy you ever 
 saw! " I said. No, upon my word, I had 
 no esoteric meaning to my words. She 
 turned her eyes quickly toward me, and 
 the single glance changed the meaning of 
 my simple sentence completely. I saw 
 the change, and, instead of protesting 
 against it with my original, innocent look, 
 I acted quite the contrary. 
 
 A second, and a very short one, too; in 
 a flash how rapidly, without the slightest 
 warning, does the entire universe shift for 
 a man! 
 
 I might have laid my hand, all in a tre 
 mor, upon her arm; I might have turned 
 my face, burning with colour like a sunset, 
 upon her; I might have gone so far as to 
 purse my lips a little, to squeeze all the 
 dreams of my life into my eyes I do not 
 know. 
 
 15 
 
226 IROKA: 
 
 What I am certain of is that I found 
 myself at her feet. She was looking into 
 my eyes as if they were a pair of very, 
 very deep wells, and as if she were reading 
 something at the bottom of them. 
 
 Something like pity came into her face 
 a faint smile. 
 
 " Let us go home; have you gathered 
 your fagots? " 
 
 I, of course, had forgotten them alto 
 gether. 
 
 XI 
 
 I did not see her again that day. 
 
 The next morning my mother told me 
 that our guests were going to leave us that 
 self-same day. She did not seem to be 
 surprised at its suddenness. At the news 
 I hid my face forgetting that the face is 
 not the only mirror of man s emotions. 
 
 " Yes, it is a great pity it grieves me 
 very much," said my mother kindly, as if 
 she wanted to soothe me. " We became 
 very much attached to them and it is very 
 hard to give them up. But as the Lord 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 227 
 
 Buddha says: C A separation for every 
 meeting/ " 
 
 There were reasons why I could not 
 take it as philosophically as my mother. 
 In truth I had all I could do to keep my 
 emotions from betraying me. 
 
 As soon as I could tear myself away 
 from my mother I ran to the hill, whose 
 calm, like the benediction from His very 
 hands, had comforted me so often. 
 
 There, under the elder pine, was the 
 cushion of pine needles which I had gath 
 ered for her and upon which she had sat. 
 It retained the impression of her body, 
 and that of my knees there, too, at her 
 feet. 
 
 "I will build a shrine here," said I to 
 myself. 
 
 XII 
 
 When I went home I found Miss Ean- 
 dolph gone. 
 
 " Here is something which she wanted 
 me to give to you," said her lady com 
 panion to me. It was a pen sketch of a 
 
228 IROKA: TALES OF JAPAN 
 
 face a beautiful girl face. It was very 
 easy to see that the face was asking the 
 question: " What can I do? " and under it 
 was this strange word, " Perhaps." 
 
 On the back of the picture was this sen 
 tence in English : 
 
 "When you are ready, look me up in 
 California and we will talk over the old 
 times together/ 
 
 This was now seven years ago. 
 
In the Old Castle Moat of 
 Kameyama 
 
In the Old Castle Moat of 
 Kameyama 
 
 It is aged, that castle moat,, covered now 
 with lotus, white, red, all of golden hearts 
 and very fond of holding up the dews, on 
 summer mornings, toward the sun, that 
 he may turn them into diamonds. 
 
 Fishing has an intoxication all its own; 
 the wine knows nothing of it. The strain 
 on the line ah! upon my honour it turns 
 my nerves into so many samisen strings 
 full of charming confusions. Berabo ! the 
 dance of a two-foot carp on your hook 
 sends a great big shooting star through 
 you the white-teethed grin, cold sweat, 
 and the eyes so full of anxiety that one 
 might say of them that they were gazing 
 
2^2 1ROKA: 
 
 at a dying lover! Ah, yes, exactly! And 
 it is not within the horizon of the piety of 
 a youngster (and I dare say that it would 
 make but little difference if he be a scion 
 of a starched Puritan) to refrain from the 
 murder of the cold-blooded brethren of 
 the water. 
 
 The castle moat has many reverend 
 memories. We boys knew of them; we 
 also were taught to respect them, like de 
 cent offsprings of samurai. What would 
 you? You cannot make a saint of a tot 
 in the same easy way in which you can peel 
 black potatoes white. And our fathers 
 and grandfathers saw our fishing lines 
 spreading the delicate comb-webs of rip 
 ples on the nirvanic face of the lotus- 
 decked moat a trifle too often to be com 
 fortable for us. 
 
 "You must not do that, child/ my 
 grandfather used to say kindly; " never in 
 the castle moat. Haven t you seen the 
 white catfish with a chisel in its mouth? " 
 
 " A white catfish, august grandfather? " 
 
 Ah, well! we knew all about it we in 
 deed ought to have known it, seeing that 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 233 
 
 we had heard the same story told us some 
 few thousand times over again. Neverthe 
 less there was one thing strange about it 
 all we never became tired of that story. 
 Having heard it a thousand times,, we 
 wanted to hear it once more. 
 
 " Yes, child, haven t you heard of the 
 white catfish in the castle moat? No? 
 Well, well! " 
 
 I, of course, took advantage of the short 
 memory of my grandsire, and, sad wretch 
 that I was! felt no shame at all. 
 
 And this is the story. With this differ 
 ence my grandsire was a good story 
 teller, and there is that in me that makes 
 me dreadfully sceptical of the wonderful 
 doctrine of heredity. 
 
 II 
 
 Dusk was falling on the summer-kissed 
 flowers of Kameyama savannah. And 
 with it there came into the town, as if he 
 fell straight out of the blue matrix of sun 
 shine, a stranger in rags, rather young and 
 
IROKA: 
 
 with features and carriage which were 
 much at war with his coarse robe and men 
 dicant hat. 
 
 " Yes, Prince Akechi is about to build 
 a castle/ an accommodating citizen, proud 
 of the new dignity of the town, told the 
 stranger. 
 
 "Kindly condescend to point out the 
 way to the palace of the august prince." 
 
 " Through the avenue of pines," said 
 the citizen, pointing ahead. 
 
 At the palace entrance: 
 
 " The august prince does not receive all 
 strangers, you must understand," said the 
 gatekeeper kindly. He meant that the 
 palace was no place for such as he. 
 
 " The humble one is by profession and 
 by the gracious shadows of the august 
 above, a worker in rocks, plaster, and 
 woods. A castle is built already in my 
 mind. For the sake of the unworthy one, 
 condescend to tell the august prince that 
 nothing is lacking but some rocks and 
 wood to make the sun happy in smiling 
 upon a castle that would laugh at its 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 235 
 
 The gatekeeper listened. Most cer 
 tainly the stranger did not talk after the 
 manner of beggars. Prince Akechi Mit- 
 suhide, his lord and master, had just seen 
 one of the daring dreams of his imagina 
 tion, phoenix-winged as it was, turned into 
 a chapter of history. His name wedded 
 fame as the tactician of Nobunaga. He 
 had brain; of that he was sure. And in 
 asmuch as he did not see any wisdom in 
 being a second in the eyes of Heaven and 
 his Majesty, the Ten-Shi (which, by inter 
 pretation, means the Son of Heaven), when 
 he could be aye, should be the first, he 
 dreamed a dream. One thing above all 
 was needed a formidable, an unassailable 
 castle. He would have it at any cost. 
 And it was noised abroad throughout the 
 provinces that Prince Akechi, the brain of 
 Nobunaga s camp, would stint neither 
 wealth, rank, nor honours to him who 
 would give him a masterpiece of a castle 
 which would, under a kindly smile of for 
 tune, turn into a cradle of that daring 
 dream of his. 
 
 " Master," said Prince Akechi, when 
 
236 IROKA: 
 
 the beggar-architect stood before him, 
 " pray condescend to tell me what are the 
 elements that are essential to a good 
 castle." 
 
 " That it should look into the eyes of 
 its enemies and tell them what ridiculous 
 idiots they are," said the stranger. " And 
 it must also have that which will make 
 itself the beloved of the gods." 
 
 " Akechi Mitsuhide would humbly lis 
 ten," said the prince, " to the master, if he 
 would paint to the humble one the castle 
 which is in his mind." 
 
 After an interview of the length of two 
 drums, the prince said to the beggar-archi 
 tect: " Master, the force of ten thousand 
 picked workmen and the resources of five 
 mountains and of the entire province are 
 at your command." 
 
 Ill 
 
 To-day the travellers who have stood on 
 the Pyramids come often to the Castle 
 Town of Kameyama, and when we tell 
 them that the rocks thev see in the ruin of 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 237 
 
 the castle were brought down from the top 
 of Atago Mountain they smile at us and 
 look very smart, and their eyes take unto 
 themselves an air, very superior,, and as 
 though they were resting on credulous 
 idiots. And when we venture to tell them 
 a simple fact namely, that some of those 
 huge stones were fifty feet high on the top 
 layer of the castle wall, they become very 
 frank in their laughter, and the twinkle of 
 their eyes makes no secret of a defiant dec 
 laration, " What do you take us for? " 
 
 Modern sciences are very proud; they 
 have many complicated machines. Our 
 forefathers had none of them. And they 
 worked what the sciences of the day label 
 as miracles. 
 
 Well, out of the blue surface of the 
 moats, very placid, full of religious flowers, 
 the granite walls of the castle rose, con 
 cave in shape, like an arm of a huge grey 
 crescent quite impossible for mortals to 
 scale. And the castle also rose. 
 
 Nor did the din of work go to bed with 
 the sun, but through all the stretch of the 
 dark echoed from star to star till it woke 
 
238 1ROKA: 
 
 Dawn and forced her to listen. It rose 
 like an altar full of the aspirations of 
 earth, full also of the ambitious prayers 
 of mortals it rose steadily, the castle. 
 
 Thrice Atago Mountain donned its 
 white, priestly robe to go through its pe 
 riod of purification at the birth of New 
 Year s, and at last the dream of the beg 
 gar-architect stood, dressed in rocks and 
 iron, very much taller than the pines two 
 centuries old, so that the sun, after forsak 
 ing all hill-tops, still kept his bright arms 
 around the turret, sinking reluctantly, re 
 minding you of a golden-haired girl kiss 
 ing her lover good-night. The sight made 
 Prince Akechi wild indeed. He looked at 
 it as if he had never watched it before; ut 
 terly, as it seemed, forgetting that he had 
 risen seven times many a night just to spy, 
 between and through the sombre arms of 
 pines and cedars, the moon playing with 
 the edifice. 
 
 The preparations to celebrate the com 
 pletion of the castle had been going on for 
 over a year. 
 
 It was a kindly day, white with autumn 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 239 
 
 frost, when they put the last tile on the 
 topmost roof, and the very next day was 
 set for the celebration. 
 
 In the garden opposite the grand en 
 trance of the castle they built a dais. And 
 nothing was lacking on the day of the 
 crowning of the labours of the beggar- 
 architect to make it as dramatic as pos 
 sible. 
 
 Amid the whiteness of intense emotion, 
 Prince Akechi sat on his dais, simply clad 
 in his ceremonial robe. Below the dais, 
 extending toward the entrance of the cas 
 tle, was an avenue, so to speak, of his 
 ministers; about them, under the clear 
 autumnal sky, on the thick, padded mats 
 and silk cushions, sat the entire retinue 
 of samurai. 
 
 The faint, woman-like suggestion of the 
 scent of sazankwa (Camellia sasanqua) was 
 in the air. A silence, which seems to be 
 an inseparable companion of a grand spec 
 tacle, sat among the spectators also. 
 
 All of a sudden: 
 
 " The builder of the castle! " was an 
 nounced. 
 
240 IROKA: 
 
 And the proud samurai bowed their 
 heads. 
 
 He walked up the avenue of ministers 
 the architect, dressed precisely as he had 
 been when he entered the town of Kame- 
 yama for the first time, in rags which had 
 evidently had more history than comeli 
 ness. A palace minister escorted him to 
 the dais of the prince. It was not cus 
 tomary for a prince to rise to his feet. 
 Prince Akechi rose. The man in rags, as 
 was the custom of the day, prostrated him 
 self. The prince said to him gently, 
 " Eise, my master." 
 
 And the architect obeyed. So they 
 stood face to face the prince and the 
 builder of the castle. The prince caught 
 his friend, the architect, by his arm, 
 as if the rags and purple were equal 
 in rank, and, pointing to the castle, he 
 said: 
 
 " Behold your work," (and minding but 
 little the extravagance of his words,) " the 
 pride of heaven and earth and my humble 
 heart." 
 
 Silence. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 241 
 
 "Ye gods! " and the lips of the archi 
 tect quivered. The despair in that ex 
 clamation paralysed the prince. He did 
 not understand. The architect started to 
 ward the castle: the prince held him back 
 a groan was heard. 
 
 "Pray/ said the prince,, "what is 
 wrong? Speak! " 
 
 " Behold, august prince, the castle leans 
 toward the rise of the sun! " 
 
 There was silence, a revelation, a tri 
 umph in that brief second that passed. 
 
 " Ah, my master, it is superb! The 
 castle points to the home of my star! Joy 
 supreme! " The prince looked toward the 
 morning, toward Atago Mountain, and 
 a very peculiar light came into his eyes. 
 Some of his most intimate counsellors saw 
 it; they, and they alone, understood the 
 meaning of it. Nobunaga was at Kioto, 
 beyond the mountain, toward the rise of 
 the sun. 
 
 " Down with the castle! " was the stern 
 retort of the builder. 
 
 " Silence! I forbid I command you 
 ." Prince Akechi, as you see, was 
 16 
 
242 IROKA: 
 
 not such a great master of his own temper 
 as he was of military tactics. The archi 
 tect smiled full of sarcasm, more full of 
 amusement. Said he: 
 
 " August prince has entrusted into my 
 hand the entire power over the new-built 
 castle/ 
 
 " But I command you. See how per 
 fect it is the castle! It is the supreme 
 content of my heart! Perfect! The gods 
 made its head point to " 
 
 The architect, musingly, doubtless look 
 ing into his own heart, as a man in a 
 dream, all absent minded, slipped from 
 the grasp of the prince and walked away. 
 
 " Stop hold ! Master, stop ! " the 
 prince called after him; but the man in 
 rags was as indifferent as Fate. 
 
 Of course the castle came down very 
 much faster than it went up, and indeed 
 on its second journey upward its steps 
 were surer and quicker on the ladder of 
 clouds. 
 
 Prince Akechi stormed with rage a 
 while, and then, seeing that he was dealing 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 243 
 
 with a man half mystery, half divine, whose 
 every action was a defiance against the 
 command of a mere mortal, abandoned his 
 struggle. 
 
 IV 
 
 About two years later the Kameyama 
 palace received a strange guest. The in 
 troducer of noble guests announced in the 
 hall of audience : " Princess of Yechigo 
 passes into the hall! " And Prince Ak- 
 echi received the wife of one of the most 
 powerful princes of the North. Her 
 daughter was with the princess. 
 
 " What an unexpected honour and plea 
 sure! Really, such kindness of the gods 
 encourages the humble one to be pious 
 believe me, madam." 
 
 " The humble one is very happy to pre 
 sent the compliments of the clan of Yech 
 igo to the first warrior of the realm and 
 as she is told the brain of Nbbunaga s 
 camp. And the unworthy one counts her 
 self fortunate to worship, for the first time, 
 your august face. For some men are like 
 
244 1RQKA: 
 
 the gods their names are so familiar, 
 their faces are rarely seen." 
 
 Prince Akechi was a thorough diplo 
 mat nothing escaped him. Neverthe 
 less, he was unable to fathom the mission 
 of the princely lady, and the eloquent con 
 versation gave a bit of fine literature to 
 the Book kept, as they say, somewhere by 
 the recording angel. 
 
 " Sire, it is an affair of the heart, not 
 of State, that has brought the humble one 
 to your august presence." 
 
 Prince Akechi frowned. 
 
 " Prince of Yechigo, my humble con 
 sort you are aware of his disappearance 
 some five years ago, are you not? He left 
 behind him only the trace of the cloud. 
 Murder was suspected many other possi 
 bilities. The search and the waiting! 
 Details are tedious, prince. All of a sud 
 den news reached me that the Prince of 
 Yechigo is now among the builders of the 
 august castle/ 7 
 
 His eyebrows rose a little; his eyes nar 
 rowed. 
 
 " Ha! Your humble servant is enlight- 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 245 
 
 ened! " he said. " Allow me to summon 
 your august consort at once! " 
 
 " Oh," said she, with something of ner 
 vous shock, quite unbecoming to her dig 
 nity, "my lord must never know of my 
 presence here never should he suspect it 
 till the work is done; till " 
 
 The change of colour, as well as the con 
 fusion of her handsome features, told a 
 story, unintelligible to Prince Akechi; not 
 at all a strange one, however, and which 
 could be stated briefly. 
 
 Through all her married life, the prin 
 cess had always opposed the artistic mania 
 of her husband, and as so many men of 
 genius fuming under domestic tyranny had 
 done before him, he simply bolted that 
 was all. With all that, the simple story 
 was a tragedy. And the reason of it all 
 was because she was madly in love with her 
 husband, and, like so many other women 
 of her rank, of imagination and of mental 
 force, she was very ambitious for him. 
 She relied upon the charms of her personal 
 beauty, upon her wit, upon the strength 
 of the chain called social usages, and felt, 
 
246 IROKA: 
 
 unhappy lady! quite equal to the task of 
 directing the course of his life. A rough 
 awakening! 
 
 " As for that/ said Prince Akechi, 
 " the new castle has been completed." 
 
 "Completed!" 
 
 " In fact it was finished some days ago; 
 but, yielding to the pleasure of my archi 
 tect., I have placed the day of celebration 
 three days hence the day of good omen. 
 Madam will see her lord,, then, on that day 
 of his triumph. And her humble servant 
 begs for the pleasure of witnessing the 
 happy reunion of her highness and the 
 august Prince of Yechigo! " 
 
 Of the body of the beggar-architect 
 there remained only a heap of sallow ashes; 
 a strange fire called fever had burnt it. In 
 place of his will and nerves of the strength 
 of iron there was only weariness and an 
 unearthly thrill. 
 
 After the completion of the castle, he 
 would wait ten days at least to see if this 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 247 
 
 time the edifice would hold its head erect. 
 Because his almost wrecked frame could 
 not stand the strain of watching the castle 
 through the ten days, he was carried away 
 to a summer palace in the mountain. It 
 was agreed that he should be conducted 
 back blindfolded to the top of the south 
 ern wall. That was the spot where they 
 would put the dais of the prince v,n the 
 day of celebration. There one could look 
 down into the moat and at the same time 
 he could command a more perfect view of 
 the castle than from any other point. 
 
 The day was superb this day of second 
 celebration. 
 
 And the samurais, as on the first occa 
 sion., were present in all their ceremonial 
 elegance. 
 
 And the castle? None could tell how 
 or when; but, as before, it made no secret 
 of its longing for the break of day. Prince 
 Akechi knew of it. He had a scheme in 
 his head as well. He would have his archi 
 tect led to the top of the wall blindfolded, 
 in front of his dais; he would tear off the 
 bandage with his own hand, and, in the 
 
248 IROKA: 
 
 sudden blaze of light, in the bewilderment 
 of revelation, he would try somehow to 
 cheat the acute perceptions of the archi 
 tect. Moreover, he relied much upon that 
 dramatic excitement of delivering the 
 Prince of Yechigo into the embraces of 
 his wife and daughter as the supreme re 
 ward of his labours! He, who knew noth 
 ing of the inner history of the Prince of 
 Yechigo, was also ignorant what a mon 
 strous piece of irony that sort of reward 
 would be in the hand of the beggar-archi 
 tect. The rest he left, as all the happy 
 people are wont to do, to Fate. 
 
 He was there in front of the dais, blind 
 folded, on the top of the wall overlooking 
 the moat the builder of the castle, the 
 princely artist in rags. The castle stood 
 to his right, with its head heavily pillowed 
 on the haze over the mountains which the 
 worshippers of the sun called " The Cradle 
 of Day." On his left, a hundred feet be 
 low, the waters of the moat were rippling, 
 bedecked with all their ancient diamonds 
 in honour of the occasion. 
 
 Prince Akechi rose: with him also, at 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 249 
 
 his right,, the Princess of Yechigo and 
 her daughter. 
 
 "Master builder! The gods are con 
 tent and are pleased! Heaven has sent to 
 its unworthy servant this wonderful gift 
 through your hands! " 
 
 Prince Akechi tore off the bandage. 
 
 "Behold^ master, how straight it is! 
 How erect in its proud dignity/ 
 
 At the same time: 
 
 "August father! " cried a child s voice. 
 
 " My lord ! Oh, prince ! " a woman s 
 voice. 
 
 And two pairs of delicate arms were 
 stretched toward the man in rags. 
 
 " Behold also, master/ said Prince 
 Akechi, with a sweeping gesture toward 
 the princess and her daughter, " Your su 
 preme reward! " 
 
 But these the architect did not seem to 
 hear. His eyes shot at the castle. In a 
 fixed, awful stare they remained nailed to 
 his dream made stone. 
 
 Fearing very much that, after all, the 
 builder might discover the inclination of 
 the castle, and in the feverish haste of one 
 
250 1RQKA: 
 
 swept into the rapids leading to a cataract, 
 Prince Akechi almost shouted in the ears 
 of the beggar-architect: 
 
 " Prince of Yechigo, behold your august 
 consort and daughter! " 
 
 The architect seemed to have turned 
 deaf all of a sudden, and his gaze strained 
 under the full knot of frowns. When 
 Prince Akechi, irritated almost beyond 
 endurance, tried perforce to turn the archi 
 tect s attention upon his wife and daugh 
 ter, the man in rags made a gesture 
 of annoyance, full of meaning, though 
 very absent minded, which was majestic 
 indeed. 
 
 Blood streamed into the architect s eyes; 
 madness also. 
 
 " And so " he hissed between his 
 
 teeth. 
 
 " Oh, august father! Father! " a child s 
 voice. 
 
 The architect took out a chisel from a 
 fold of his rag kimono. Silence did not 
 dare to breathe. He took the chisel be 
 tween his teeth. 
 
 " And so " he almost sighed this 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 251 
 
 time his voice breaking against the 
 chisel between his teeth. 
 
 Suddenly there was a woman s scream. 
 The sound of a falling body followed it. 
 
 A hundred feet below, where the sacred 
 lotus bloomed on the nirvanic waves of 
 the moat,, one saw a white fountain rise 
 all of a sudden a few seconds. And 
 thence came up also the sound of a plunge. 
 
 And there is a white catfish in the moat 
 of Kameyama Castle with a chisel in its 
 mouth so my grandfather told me. 
 
A Geisha 
 
A Geisha 
 
 A Japanese Love Story 
 
 You could almost see the sun of the 
 south in the warmth of her olive skin; in 
 her dark eyes, the phosphorescent glow of 
 her native seas, and her lips told you 
 where the pomegranate grew. She was 
 from the coast of Kyushyu. 
 
 It was a good, quiet place, her native 
 town. But the horses on the hillsides were 
 hungry; so also her imagination. She 
 read newspapers. They told her the story 
 of Miss A. and Miss Z.; how they made 
 their name, filled their boudoirs with the 
 sighs of men, their adorations, their smiles. 
 Why, then, should not she as well? Her 
 imagination was southern, and she had the 
 self-confidence that was of the north. And 
 
256 IROKA: 
 
 many a time had she asked of her mirror 
 if she were really as beautiful as " that " ? 
 
 Tokio is full of such girls. Men sneer 
 at them, and good women sigh as they 
 watch the almost invariable road they 
 march through the wickedness of the capi 
 tal city. But Chika s was the partial 
 ity of tutelary gods. She came to the city 
 to work her way; and she did work. But 
 she was ambitious. 
 
 There is just one way open for a girl of 
 beauty and ambition and yet of no name, 
 no education, to enter the society of men 
 of wit, rank, and wealth. And that way 
 leads through banquet halls. The Geisha 
 is a professional entertainer, a companion 
 of wines and songs, and she is found in 
 a palace, and if her position is not as 
 philosophical as that of the spider, it is 
 more sociable. Chika saw this road. 
 
 At one of the dinners given in honour 
 of a man who had written a book on the 
 other side of the world and made entire 
 Japan fall in love with him, Chika met 
 a young man on the veranda commanding 
 the picture-like garden of the Tokio Club. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 257 
 
 " Mademoiselle, I have something to tell 
 you which I am sure you will not believe." 
 
 " Why., sir, if I may be pardoned for my 
 curiosity? " 
 
 " Because it is too good, too pleasant." 
 
 " Sir, the world is too sad to deny a 
 pleasure to a girl like me," she said to him. 
 
 " Well, then,, mademoiselle, for some 
 time I wanted to cage a fairy in order to 
 paint her. I am an idolater, and my deity 
 is the Beautiful. As you may know, I am 
 an artist. I went into the land of dreams 
 to hunt for her. When I met you I saw 
 my mistake. The other day I refused to 
 paint Countess M., for I worship and serve 
 none but Beauty. Would you condescend 
 to count this as one of many trophies, 
 and . . . ?" 
 
 A week or so later she was in his studio. 
 
 At work there, with perhaps one of the 
 most perfect models who has ever posed 
 before an artist, Kagawa Yuko completely 
 forgot the world; but evening parties, the 
 leisure hours of great ladies, the chats of 
 clubs and newspapers persisted in remem 
 bering him. 
 17 
 
258 IROKA: 
 
 Gossip is a narrow-minded imp, and 
 when it saw Chika, a mere mortal, out 
 weighing the whole globe on Kagawa s 
 scale, it did not like it and said so in its 
 low, far-reaching whispers. The artist s 
 sudden disappearance from tea and cake 
 played on all the different chords of the 
 metropolitan humours some laughed, 
 some sighed, some sneered, some frowned, 
 and some were thoughtful enough to write 
 to him (on dainty, perfumed, crested note- 
 papers) that they could not believe their 
 own eyes and ears which certainly was 
 a very bad state of things. 
 
 Kagawa received a letter one day which 
 he read, because it had the postmark of 
 his native town upon it. It informed him 
 that he was to have the pleasure of enter 
 taining a party of which his sister was a 
 member, and that he was further to be 
 honoured to act as its guide in Tokio. As 
 the token of his appreciation of the pleas 
 ure and honour, he said to Chika: 
 
 " This life is full of trials give me 
 a bit of philosophy to bear them grace 
 fully! 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 259 
 
 Chika gave him a smile, which served 
 him better than a Confucian maxim. 
 
 The party did not stay longer than a 
 month, but when it left Tokio one of the 
 young ladies carried away more blushes, 
 and dreams, and smiles than her baggage 
 brought into the capital. Kagawa was 
 engaged to Takamatsu Teruko. 
 
 It was a case of love at first sight. Miss 
 Takamatsu was from one of the very best 
 families; she had money, for which Ka 
 gawa did not care; but at the same time 
 she had grace and naivete, which were 
 very rare in the city, and for which the 
 artist did care much. 
 
 Chika . . . Oh, of course, 
 but . . w 
 
 Chika, who came to him just as soon 
 as the party had gone away, did not know 
 of this. It was a very simple news to com 
 municate, but when she entered into the 
 studio with a smile, Kagawa had to turn 
 his head away. He had promised himself 
 to tell her everything, the very first time 
 he would see her. He broke his word; but 
 it was to himself that he proved false, so 
 
260 IROKA: 
 
 he did not deem himself unworthy the 
 name of gentleman. 
 
 He told her that he was going to finish 
 the picture in a few days now. And she, 
 looking at the canvas, said to him: 
 
 " That branch of the blooming cherry 
 must be very hard to break, for I have 
 been trying for three months now! " 
 
 When she was gone he said to himself, 
 by way of consolation, " This must happen 
 some time or other. I haven t known her 
 much more than a year. But heavens! 
 How hard it is. I have not wronged her, 
 of course that is ... but . . ." 
 
 "She is the most beautiful woman I ever 
 saw," he added, as if there were any con 
 nection between these statements. 
 
 " Well, what she wants is a name fame, 
 fortune, perhaps. Very well, I will give 
 them to her. If this picture will not 
 bring them to her, it is none of my faults." 
 
 That was the last thing he said that 
 day. He put out the light and tumbled 
 into his couch, but he could not find Sleep 
 hiding in any of its corners or folds. 
 
 She was all smiles now, and very much 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 261 
 
 happier than others, because she had had 
 clouds, dense clouds, too, in the earlier 
 days of her struggle. The pathos of this 
 beautiful girl thanking Future in advance 
 with smiles that were the joys of gods, 
 went straight to Kagawa s heart it would 
 have touched the heart of a stone Buddha 
 on a country road as well. There is a 
 pleasure that passes the understandings 
 of the world- wise which comes to a woman, 
 I am told, when her confidence in man 
 builds a pedestal for him and her devotion 
 translates him, a weak mortal, into a god, 
 so that he could more becomingly sit upon 
 it. That pleasure was beaming out from 
 every pore of Chika. By that time she 
 came to know much of the world, some 
 thing of human nature, too only thor 
 oughly to despise it but then her Ka- 
 gawa, who, indeed, was in the world, was 
 not of it. 
 
 Here, then, was a beautiful woman who 
 was thoroughly happy. You cannot blame 
 the gods for getting jealous of her, a trifle. 
 
 But then men are so queer and Ka- 
 gawa was, after all, a man when such a 
 
262 1ROKA: 
 
 picture of joy and comeliness as Chika 
 sits beside him he must go hunting for 
 something that will make him thor 
 oughly wretched. And, with smiling 
 Chika by his side on the divan of the 
 studio, on that early summer day, it would 
 have been rather hard for you to find a 
 more miserable man in the city of Tokio. 
 
 His voice was tremulous. 
 
 " Chika, I am afraid that you will hate 
 me before you leave me to-day," he began. 
 The tone of voice rather than the words 
 frightened her. 
 
 "Why, what s the matter, Kagawa- 
 san?" 
 
 She turned sharply round and looked 
 at him. The eyes of the artist, of this 
 idolater of the Beautiful, which used to 
 hang on her every look and expression, 
 now seemed to prefer the monotonous, 
 blank mat to the most beautiful of speak 
 ing features. 
 
 " The will of one s parents must be 
 obeyed, you know," was the solemn open 
 ing sentence of the criminal. It was a 
 great sacrifice for him so he said. Oh, 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 263 
 
 what a loathsome fondness for virtues a 
 sinner has! 
 
 " One must settle down sometimes, you 
 know. One cannot continue this sort of 
 life all the time, and " 
 
 She was staring at him so intensely that 
 his face seemed to her like a blur. She 
 remained silent. 
 
 " I want you to he reasonable, Chika 
 I know you will. You know how much 
 I love you one can t help but to love you. 
 Oh, I am wretched! It s all right if one 
 could do just what he likes in this world 
 but " 
 
 You might talk as much as you like and 
 you could never convince Chika that it 
 was possible for Kagawa to lie. It took 
 more time, however, for the meaning of 
 his words to become clear to her thL i a 
 heavy fog to turn purple and transparent 
 on a Japanese hillside under the bright 
 sun. When she did understand the im 
 port of his words it struck her like a kick 
 from a muddy boot on her naked heart. 
 She could not speak; her silence awed him 
 and for the first time he stole a glance 
 
264 1ROKA: 
 
 at her. Then he saw one of those sights 
 which one carries, without any effort of 
 the memory, to the grave. 
 
 " For heaven s sake, don t take it so 
 seriously so painfully! " 
 
 She was not crying; she had not recov 
 ered from the blow which stunned her. 
 He took her hand: met that strange, stony 
 look wherein the gods write the sentence 
 of death for a certain set of criminals. 
 
 " 0, I know I promised to marry you, 
 
 but you see " He paused. He seemed 
 
 to have been deserted by his ever-ready 
 lies. Heaven is just. "When he said that 
 he was miserable he told the truth. 
 
 " But you see " pointing to the canvas". 
 
 That was a magnificent piece of work 
 a veritable masterpiece. " You see fame, 
 wealth, adoration of men will be all 
 yours!" 
 
 Yes, he did dare say that. It was in 
 deed natural that he was awed by his own 
 audacity. 
 
 Chika s face looked, for a second, like 
 a shoji screening a burning room. She 
 rose and walked to the canvas. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 265 
 
 " This do you mean this? " she asked 
 him with a strange voice. The painter 
 could not even nod. With her teeth set, 
 her beautiful face hardening, pale, all in a 
 tremour, she dug her fingers into the can 
 vas. The easel fell. She leaped upon the 
 humiliated canvas; stamped it to tatters. 
 Then, weeping, her hair in disorder, she 
 sunk amid the ruins of her beautiful por 
 trait. The scene went into the heart of 
 the artist. 
 
 He took her in his arms and lifted her: 
 " Chika, Chika! " Tears were in his 
 eyes. His voice worked upon her like a 
 magic. She pulled him to the divan. 
 
 " Oh, forgive me forgive me! I was 
 mad. 0, what have I done! " 
 
 She wept, wept, wept. 
 
 " Oh, I was all wrong. I should not have 
 hoped for such a great thing. The gods 
 must be angry with me for aspiring to 
 marry you, to make you mine. No, no! 
 It is not your fault, dear beloved. I was 
 to blame. And the beautiful picture! Oh, 
 pardon me but how can you forgive 
 me?" 
 
266 IRQKA: 
 
 When, touched through and through, 
 the painter succeeded in soothing her, she 
 said: 
 
 " Oh, I want you to be happy. Yes, you 
 must marry a good, noble lady of your 
 honourable rank. I was all wrong; for 
 give me! " 
 
 Seeing that he was very unhappy, she 
 tried all she could to console him. She 
 even smiled. 
 
 " See, I am all right now. I was so 
 silly, wasn t I?" 
 
 Yes, she joked. And when it sounded 
 like a mockery heaped on her broken, 
 crushed heart, she suppressed a sob. 
 
 " Oh, I shall love you always will you 
 not let me do that you will, won t you? 
 You have been so good to me, honourable 
 beloved/ 
 
 Meanwhile the artist, as he but too 
 richly deserved, suffered the torment of 
 the damned. 
 
 When he closed his studio in the capital 
 to return to his native town his bride was 
 waiting for him there he said he would 
 never return to the city. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 267 
 
 Sendai, the birthplace of the artist, saw 
 a very pale bridegroom. He did not paint 
 anything after his return home. He was 
 too busy attending other matters, namely, 
 to deceive his bride (for he wanted her to 
 see how happy he was) and to run away 
 from his memory to give the lie to facts, 
 or at least to turn them into a dim dream. 
 
 In spite of his solemn, emphatic 
 " never " he was seen on the streets of 
 Tokio, or rather in the gay maelstrom of 
 Tokio s society, in a marvellously short 
 time. All his friends came to congratu 
 late him with sentences that sounded as if 
 they had been on paper four, five, times. 
 And, paying their compliments on the 
 beauty of his bride, some of the more fa 
 miliar, some of the more careless, of his 
 comrades, often happened to ask him: 
 
 "And how is your picture? How is 
 your beautiful model ? " 
 
 For his friends did not know that Ka- 
 gawa was there in the capital to find out 
 where, how, through what vale of shadows 
 Chika was passing and for nothing 
 else. 
 
268 IROKA: 
 
 When his bride was safely out of the 
 reach of his voice he repeated to himself, 
 "How was it I thought that woman charm 
 ing that is a miracle! " In those mo 
 ments he was haunted by the lines and 
 curves and the dream-winged expressions 
 of Chika, which he had tried and suc 
 ceeded once to catch in colours on his 
 canvas. 
 
 Impatience gave him a rack, and he 
 came to find out the limit of human en 
 durance. He must see! 
 
 For three days so his wife understood 
 him to say he was obliged to go and see 
 one of his artist friends somewhere in the 
 neighbourhood of Aoyama. 
 
 All that time he had been hunting up 
 the friends of Chika; they told him what 
 they knew of her that she had disap 
 peared all of a sudden from the " Gold- 
 Cloud-Hall/ where she had shone as the 
 star about four months ago. That was 
 just about the time when Kagawa had left 
 Tokio for his home. 
 
 He gave up the search it was no use. 
 Just to keep himself out of the lunatic 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 269 
 
 asylum he took to his brush. He had care 
 fully collected a few hundred sketches he 
 had made of Chika, and tried to conjure 
 up upon a canvas once more the girl trying 
 to break off a branch from the spring-smil 
 ing cherry. One day he worked far be 
 yond the midnight,, and the nirvanic moon 
 hanging on a bough of a pine tree in his 
 yard tempted him out of the studio. As 
 he turned a corner of a hedge he surprised 
 a woman crouching in the shade of it. 
 
 " Who s there?" 
 
 The woman tried to run away, and in so 
 doing she exposed her face to the moon. 
 It was just a glimpse that Kagawa saw, but 
 that was enough. He caught her by her 
 sleeve. 
 
 Chika promised him that she would 
 see him to-morrow; gave him her address. 
 He had to believe her; he had no choice 
 he could not keep her standing there all 
 night. 
 
 " Good-bye! " he said, still holding her 
 hand. 
 
 She raised her face. The moon kissed 
 the tears in her eyes, her quivering lips 
 
270 IROKA: TALES OF JAPAN 
 
 also, and gave romance to the pallor of 
 her cheeks. An artist who would paint 
 the Japanese Madonna ought to have seen 
 her then. Just as soon as she could con 
 trol her mutinous lips, she said: 
 
 " Sayonara, Sayonara, Kagawa-san! " 
 She withdrew her hand from his grasp, 
 walked hurriedly, and, turning the corner 
 of the hedge, disappeared. Where she had 
 stood the silver frost of moonlight alone 
 remained. The echo of her " Sayonara " 
 played on all the heart strings of Kagawa; 
 it intoxicated him, made him dizzy it 
 made him dream. He felt as if he were 
 hearing the echo-strains from the Land 
 of the Lotus. 
 
 The morning papers of the next day had 
 the following in bold, dark print: 
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF YOTSUYA- 
 
 MOAT. 
 
 The Charming Chika, of Gold-Cloud- 
 Hall, is now a Memory! 
 
Sakuma Sukenari 
 
Sakuma Sukenari 
 
 The Story of a Japanese Outlaw 
 
 The godown No. 4, in the palace com 
 pound of Yamaguchi, was filled with per 
 haps the oldest and the choicest treasures 
 of the princely house of Matsudaira. 
 Three officers of the palace were present at 
 the opening of it, and when they found it 
 as empty as a cicada s shell, the colour of 
 their faces changed. They rushed into it 
 and filled the empty godown with their 
 bewilderment. There was no sign of a 
 thief here, no hint of an ingress or egress 
 that had evidently been made. All the 
 treasures were gone; how? They did not 
 know. Through what hole? That, they 
 could not find. By whom? Heaven only 
 knew. 
 
 18 
 
274 IROKA: 
 
 " Gompachi Shiro is that you? " 
 
 "What s that?" whispered the officers 
 among themselves. 
 
 " Say, who is there above; is that you, 
 Shiro ? " the voice repeated. Evidently it 
 came from under the stone floor of the go- 
 down. The officers did not answer. By- 
 and-bye, one of the flags which paved the 
 floor lifted up gently; a man s head 
 emerged. 
 
 " Sakuma Sukenari! " 
 
 A palace officer recognised the grey- 
 haired man. Then, all of a sudden he dis 
 appeared like the twinkle of a spark. All 
 rushed to the stone and tried to raise it; 
 it did not yield. A moment more, and 
 that portion of the floor gave in. There 
 was a fearful sound of falling bodies, and 
 the still more fearful screams and groans 
 of the doomed men. The floor closed up 
 again over the wall. Then a sound as of 
 the rushing of a mighty stream drowned 
 the complaints of the lost. 
 
 The whole clan was aroused at the news. 
 They dug open the entire space where 
 upon the godown had stood. They found 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 275 
 
 an immense deep well, and it was full of 
 water. However, after a painstaking 
 search of many days, they could not re 
 cover the remains of the palace officers 
 and men. 
 
 All this happened in the early autumn, 
 and, as I have said, in Yamaguchi of 
 Choshyu Clan. And Choshyu is one of 
 the southern provinces of Nihon. 
 
 II 
 
 Sakuma Sukenari looked out from a 
 cave not far from the foot of the moun 
 tain, and greeted the death of the day. 
 He was there because he knew that many 
 hundred armed men were out hunting him 
 on the coast of Choshyu, where the south 
 ern waves rippled. 
 
 All admired him, and most of them 
 loved him. Every one knew that he was 
 a robber; and every one knew that robbery 
 was dishonourable wrong. 
 
 " Well, I will tell them where I am, the 
 imbeciles! " 
 
276 IROKA: 
 
 Then shading his eyes, he looked afar. 
 The evening rays were going away from 
 the hillside, and the dust, like soft black 
 rain, was falling upon the Kameyama 
 Castle Town. 
 
 " Yes, by to-morrow morning they 
 will find out my whereabouts." 
 
 The lonely man smiled again and ca 
 ressed his sword this was the one friend 
 that never disappointed him. 
 
 Ill 
 
 A little past midnight. 
 
 A touch or two on the stone wall, and he 
 was within the enclosure of perhaps the 
 wealthiest house of the town. There was 
 a fortune in that feat, and a cat might with 
 profit have learned something from his 
 agility. At last he reached the principal 
 bedchamber. He ungrooved a shoji, and 
 under his magic touch it would not utter 
 a single squeak of protest. He was within 
 the room as gracefully as a sportive fairy. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 277 
 
 At the head of the bed, a seed-oil, pith- 
 wick lamp was almost falling asleep over 
 the dreams of things and men. 
 
 Suddenly he stopped, and a smile, such 
 as you see on a flower-enamelled field of 
 May, came and untied the last knot of care 
 and made an amusing fun a rather sad 
 sort of fun it was, too of that stoic indif 
 ference of his face. 
 
 A sight so unexpected, so bright, so 
 unearthly, so innocent, so godlike met 
 his scrutinising eyes, and the tender hu 
 mour of the situation quite overwhelmed 
 him. 
 
 A baby smiled at him. It held out its 
 bud-like fist, which by-and-bye opened 
 into a flower full of dimples. Sakuma 
 stuck his naked sword into the mat. 
 Stooping down with that gracious pose 
 which was natural to him, and with the 
 sweetest smiles, he acknowledged his de 
 feat on his knees. He was completely, 
 absolutely vanquished. 
 
 At that time, when he was putting those 
 ruby petals of the baby hand between his 
 lips, it never occurred to him that, not 
 
278 IROKA: 
 
 quite a year before this, in the town of 
 Wakamatsu, he had treated some thirty 
 armed men, single-handed, to handsome, 
 and, according to those men who had been 
 entertained, miraculous sword-feats. But 
 it was a fact. A hundred men might have 
 attacked him just as well, for it made no 
 difference to Sakuma. And this man, who 
 could fairly dance on the sword-blades of 
 his enemies and what is more, enjoy the 
 dance he who had convinced the select 
 men of ten clans by turns that he was a 
 cloud, an apparition, a visitation of an oni, 
 a ghost, a ma; he whom no iron cables, no 
 prison bars could hold, this genius of a 
 robber was caught. The baby was hold 
 ing him with its dimpled finger. 
 
 Forgetting all forgetting for what he 
 had broken into the house; forgetting that 
 his visit was rather unexpected on the part 
 of those two people, the master and the 
 mistress of the house who were sleeping 
 there before his eyes; forgetting that he 
 came without any invitation; that the 
 human eyes were not made to sleep on 
 forever; that the night was not going to 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 279 
 
 last as long as a year he gathered up the 
 child (and a mother would have loved him 
 just for the manner wherewith he had 
 caught up that baby in his arms), and sit 
 ting cross-legged, he began to play with 
 the baby. He made faces at it; for it he 
 twisted his fingers into the shapes of a 
 hundred different animals and flowers and 
 men. Then the baby, raising its fat arms, 
 beat the air as if it wanted to tell him what 
 it had been before it came into this world, 
 and whence it came, and that it had not 
 been away from its former home so long 
 that it had forgot all about the mode of its 
 pre-existence which, in truth, seemed to 
 be a happier one than that of the present. 
 After winnowing the air vigorously, and 
 seeing itself still in the lap of Sakuma, it 
 opened its large, wonder-pregnant eyes. 
 " Why, in the name of sanity, don t I rise 
 into the air? " they seemed to query, those 
 eyes. Just then it was evident that the 
 humour of the situation struck its merry 
 understanding. 
 
 " Aaaa aaaa aaaa boo oo ah 
 brrrrrrrrr! " it shouted at the top note of 
 
280 1ROKA: 
 
 its baby pipe. That jolly note from the 
 baby throat, however, seemed to have 
 aroused a fiend in the sharp eyes of Saku 
 ma. They had been so childlike but a 
 second ago! Now they were as forbidding 
 as winter. He put his finger on the lips 
 of the baby; shot his eyes at the sleepers. 
 They were sound asleep yet. No danger 
 and his face melted again into an amia 
 ble sweetness. 
 
 But in a short while, it seemed that the 
 baby was much pleased at the mouse which 
 Sakuma formed out of his fingers and 
 which he made crawl under the arms of 
 the child. The baby appreciated the treat 
 ment noisily, and with a vehement enthu 
 siasm. This time the shrill scream was so 
 loud that Sakuma bit his lips, rose with a 
 start, made a rush toward the sword he had 
 stuck in the mat. Even that, however, 
 did not disturb the wonderfully sinless 
 sleepers. And when he saw himself safe 
 again, the ridiculousness of his situation 
 came upon him and shook every bone in 
 him in a silent convulsion of laughter. 
 
 All of a sudden he stopped laughing. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 281 
 
 Sharply he turned his eyes on the sleeping 
 woman. The mother was singing a lul 
 laby sweet, plaintive, dreamy. She was 
 still sleeping; but somehow the cry of the 
 child was heard by her, and she was sing 
 ing, trying to soothe it to sleep with the 
 melody. 
 
 Sakuma looked at the woman till he 
 could see no more because of the blinding 
 tears. He still held the baby in his arms. 
 Many things came into his head. He, too, 
 had a home once. Yes, his wife was with 
 him, then. He also had a girl baby 
 twenty- two years ago! His wife went 
 ahead of him to meet her Buddha, for as 
 young as she was, her heart was pure 
 enough to see the holy lord. He lost his 
 baby daughter in a festival crowd. And 
 now his hair had turned grey, and after 
 taxing to the utmost the sagacity of his 
 brain which the people declared to be 
 either that of a demon or simply a miracle 
 in search of the lost child, and after 
 twenty-two years, he could not find as 
 much as a suspicion of a trace of her. 
 
 " Time was when I was the model of de- 
 
282 IRQKA: 
 
 voted husbands, when I was loved by a 
 woman lily-pure and lovely as a smile, 
 when I was perfectly happy! " so he told 
 the baby in a whisper. He confided many 
 more secrets to it. And the little confes 
 sor took in, without the least alarm, all the 
 astounding revelations of the greatest 
 robber of the age. 
 
 Providence willed that this touching 
 scene should not go on forever, and on the 
 ice-edged air was heard the first matin of 
 a cock. 
 
 They were very quick, his movements 
 a little more adroit than the nervousness 
 of electric flashes. But the baby could not 
 understand why Sakuma should leave it on 
 the mat, since it had such a jolly time on 
 his lap. 
 
 " A aaa ahiiiiiii! " it cried to him. 
 
 " Sayonara ! " he said, politely, to the 
 baby. " Good-night, Innocence! " 
 
 He waved his hand at it. But at the 
 parting he weakened. Well, he wanted a 
 little souvenir which would recall to him 
 in after-days of worry and torment 
 this night which came to him as unex- 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 283 
 
 pectedly as a patch of sunny sky in the 
 dead of night. 
 
 Oh, how he would have loved to carry 
 that baby away with him! He faltered. 
 He knew that dawn would whiten on him 
 very soon, and yet if he were to hesitate 
 a few moments more he would be forced to 
 spur his beloved steed to death in order to 
 save his life. 
 
 There stood a treasure chest on the top 
 of the bureau. He slipped it under his 
 arm. Bowing sweetly to the baby, as a 
 gentleman of court bidding a farewell to 
 his lady-love, he took a few steps away, his 
 eyes still reluctant upon the child. 
 
 The baby stretched forth its hands. 
 
 " Aboo aboo oo! " it said, and at once 
 falling on all fours crawled toward Saku- 
 ma. It stopped: looked at him. Sakuma 
 did not come toward it, and then clouds 
 and storm fell upon the little dimpled face. 
 
 How could he leave it? Of course he 
 went back to it. 
 
 " Dear one," he whispered, "sayonara!" 
 He took it up in his arms once again. He 
 pressed, in a long caress, its soft pink 
 
284 IROKA: 
 
 cheeks against his, weather-beaten and 
 callous. It felt so tender to him. 
 
 Then the mother turned in her sleep 
 with a faint groan. 
 
 Like an apparition he was gone! 
 
 IV 
 
 There were a few gold and silver coins 
 in the treasure chest. As was his wont, he 
 would dole them to the freezing and the 
 starving. The lonely life he led gave him 
 the habit of soliloquising: 
 
 " Poor wretches they must be freezing 
 to death, this icy day." 
 
 Then he took out a mamoribukuro, and 
 a mamoribukuro is a small embroidered 
 sack worn on the girdle of a child, wherein 
 an o-fuda, a sacred card of a guardian 
 deity, is kept along with the address of its 
 parents. 
 
 Sakuma threw it out on the ground ab 
 sent-mindedly. And then took it up again 
 with a smile. 
 
 " The baby s! " he said, brightening. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 285 
 
 " I ll keep it as a memento! " But when 
 his attention was struck with its old, worn- 
 out condition, he looked at it again. Sud 
 denly he leaped up with it; looked around 
 as a squirrel with a nut, and then at 
 once opened the sack his fingers all in 
 a tremour, and impatience burning his 
 eyes. 
 
 Yes, he was sure of it the recognition 
 came like a flash he had given this to his 
 little daughter twenty years ago. Inside 
 it was the sacred card of the guardian deity 
 of his native town but of course there 
 was no address. Might he yet be mis 
 taken? He looked at it again. No, there 
 is that family crest wrought with silk 
 within a fold where none could see. 
 
 "What, what, what!" 
 
 This cynic, this misanthrope, this rider 
 of the most perilous adventures, he who 
 had always been stone-calm at the very 
 fury-vortex of events, this man was in a 
 flutter of excitement like a girl of fifteen 
 at the death of her lover! 
 
 And all this for no other reason than 
 that old mamorilulcuro. He wanted to 
 
286 IRQKA: 
 
 thank heaven and tears were cascading 
 his cheeks and at the same time he was, 
 in his heart, cursing the gods for keeping 
 his daughter away from him so long. 
 " That was she, then, that mother! " 
 He was as happy as if he had read his 
 name on the golden roll in the blessed 
 Lotus-Land of the holy Buddhas. " And 
 the baby my grandchild! " It was too 
 much it quite melted him. 
 
 So his daughter, lost on that festival of 
 long ago, was stolen by some one. She 
 was brought up by heaven alone knows 
 whom, and now she was the wife of a 
 wealthy cJwnin! 
 
 At last! at last! he had seen his lost 
 daughter. And as he sat in a little, moun 
 tain-deep deserted shrine of Jido at the 
 foot of Atago Mountain, he recalled the 
 oath he had made to the gods. It was to 
 the effect that as soon as he would find his 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 287 
 
 lost child safe and happy he would offer 
 his life on an altar. And now since the 
 gods had led him although it was after 
 many, many weary years to his life-desire 
 and prayer, there seemed but one path for 
 his feet to tread. Moreover, he was feel 
 ing the weight of snow that was on his 
 head a little too heavy, in spite of all his 
 brilliant wit. 
 
 He robbed the rich enormously, and 
 giving everything to the poor, lived him 
 self the severe and simple life of an an 
 chorite. The law of the land could not 
 for a moment tolerate any such crime, and 
 so it sent many an army of men after him. 
 And, to tell the truth, those men afforded 
 him many pleasant diversions. 
 
 Now that his days were numbered, he 
 should be seated peacefully in front of the 
 shrine, like a pious grandfather who had 
 spent all his life in domestic beatitude 
 about a hearth. Thus at the close of his 
 ripe age he would start out on a pious 
 pilgrimage, that he might die on his way 
 to a sacred temple of a holy Buddha. 
 This, they say, is the most blessed of 
 
288 IROKA: 
 
 deaths, seeing that such pilgrims shall find 
 the shortest cut to the Holy Land of the 
 Absolute Bliss. His mind was made up. 
 He would die in peace, and yet 
 
 Wealthy, but she was now the wife of 
 a clwnin; she had been a daughter of a 
 samurai. Ah, if he could but see her a 
 samurai! This last wish of his was the 
 greatest, and since he knew that he could 
 never see it fulfilled in his lifetime, this 
 was the most pathetic of his longings as 
 well nevertheless, it was not an absolute 
 despair with him. 
 
 In fact, he knew by heart what the pla 
 cards were publishing abroad at almost 
 every entrance of every city, town, village, 
 or shrine, and at every crossing of country 
 roads. 
 
 His death and perhaps that alone 
 would bring about the sole and the greatest 
 longing of his heart. "What a happy death 
 he was going to die after all! A smile 
 came and made his face look kindly, as 
 the ripples make the deep, solemn, awful 
 ocean playful. 
 
 " Oh, daughter! " he stretched out his 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 289 
 
 arms. The passion of fatherhood was 
 sweeping him off his feet. 
 
 Oh, just to clasp her once in his arms 
 and to tell her what he was to her; what 
 she was to him, just once to be recog 
 nised by her to claim that baby with 
 whom he had played the night before, as 
 his own, as his grandchild! He would 
 have given three kingdoms; his life three 
 times over for it. But, no! That could 
 
 never be. And since it could not be 
 
 They say it is harder to conquer one s self 
 than to take a walled city. Indeed, there 
 is no comparison at all. 
 
 But, at any rate, he must see her when 
 she was awake and in the full light of day. 
 Life or death he must! How? His 
 brain, as I have said, was very fertile. 
 
 With the shower of the earliest rays the 
 next morning, there fell straight out of 
 heaven, to all appearance a mendicant 
 before the gate of the wealthy chonin. 
 
 A servant girl responded to him with a 
 handful of rice. 
 
 "As the reward of many meritorious 
 acts of this household," said the pious 
 19 
 
290 IROKA: 
 
 voice, "the Buddhas are pleased to give 
 the master of the family a token of their 
 approval. Tell him, at the break of day 
 to-morrow, to hasten to a little shrine of 
 Jido under the pine tree at the foot of 
 Atago Mountain, beyond the village of 
 Hozu." 
 
 He walked away a few steps, and then, 
 as if he had forgot something, he turned 
 round and came back to the gate. 
 
 " Is there a child in the family that the 
 humble mendicant could bless? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, august priest." 
 
 The maid brought out a baby in her 
 arms. 
 
 " The humble one would rather bless it 
 in its mother s arms," said the mendicant. 
 
 After a while, when a young mother 
 came out, the deep shading Jcasa (a mush 
 room-shaped hat) of the priest tilted a 
 little. 
 
 It was a long, lingering blessing, in a 
 voice that trembled with emotion. It was 
 as reluctant as a lover s farewell. It was 
 as moving as the last song of a bird that 
 is dying. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 291 
 
 The mother, very much touched and 
 pleased with it all, added a few more sacks 
 of rice and coin to the contribution. But 
 when the mendicant wiped, very hastily, 
 with all the nervous awkwardness of em 
 barrassment, something off his cheeks, the 
 mother wondered. 
 
 The mendicant again started to depart. 
 A few steps, and once more he was back 
 and addressed the mother: 
 
 " To-morrow, early in the morning, be 
 fore the sun, if your honourable husband 
 were to go to a neglected little shrine of 
 Jido at the foot of Atago Mountain, on the 
 Hozu road " 
 
 "Yes, august priest, the humble one 
 knows the shrine/ 7 the mother told him. 
 
 " There let him go there, and the Bud- 
 dhas have prepared a reward of the meri 
 torious for him, and his heart will be made 
 glad of that token of approval from the 
 Lord Buddha." 
 
 The mother, hearing the solemn voice of 
 the holy man, wondered again at its 
 meaning. 
 
292 IRQKA: 
 
 VI 
 
 As the wealthy cJionin turned into the 
 shrine of Jido, at the gate of it he read 
 the ever-present placard: 
 
 "Whoever shall deliver into the hand 
 of authority, Sakuma Sukenari, an outlaw, 
 alive or dead, renders a service to State. 
 In recognition of the merits thereof, for 
 the maintenance of peace in the land, he 
 will he raised to the rank of samurai with 
 the annuity of 3,000 Itoku, and will be 
 made a retainer of the lord of Kameyama 
 Clan. 
 
 " The prince will be pleased to honour 
 him with the gift of a sword." 
 
 To this was added a minute description 
 of the robber, more famous than princes. 
 
 Under the sacred cedar tree, close to the 
 entrance of the inner shrine, there was a 
 man bowing over his naked sword. The 
 chonin walked up to him; stopped short, 
 and examined him from a distance. 
 
 " Dead! " he gasped, and jumped away. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 293 
 
 However, curiosity compelled his second 
 glance over his shoulder. At the right- 
 hand side of the dead man he saw a 
 treasure chest. 
 
 "What!" 
 
 Yes, it was his it had been stolen the 
 night previous. How did it happen that 
 it found its way to this out-of- world shrine 
 of Jido ? Naturally his spirit of investiga 
 tion got the upper hand of him. As he 
 reached down to lift the chest his eyes fell 
 upon the characters traced on the sands of 
 the shrine court in front of the dead man: 
 
 " I am Sakuma Sukenari, the noted rob 
 ber. Examine my face! " 
 
 " So it was he who broke into my house 
 last night! " he said, with satisfaction. 
 Then he thought of the great reward 
 offered by the lord of the clan for the 
 head of the outlaw. 
 
 He thought: " It was by the punishment 
 of the Buddhas that the robber at last was 
 caught!" Pious meditations filled his 
 heart, and tears his eyes. He seized the 
 head of the dead by its snow locks and 
 lifted it up. It was he. There were those 
 
294 1ROKA: 
 
 scars, one over the left eye and the other 
 across the left cheek. His massive chin 
 and his mouth, which was an emphatic line 
 of firmness., bulldoggishness, power every 
 particular given in the placard was there. 
 But as the chonin lifted up the head of the 
 robher he saw upon his lap a mamori- 
 bukuro, made of brocade, and which was 
 very familiar to him. It had belonged to 
 his wife, and she had given it to the baby. 
 So the outlaw was stupid enough to look 
 for the treasure in a bag where the card 
 of a guardian deity is kept! He laughed 
 to himself and speculated on the doltish- 
 ness of the world in general. What a joke! 
 So they thought that this wretch was the 
 sharpest of human wits! 
 
 VII 
 
 At home, when he told his wife all the 
 circumstances of the discovery, she became 
 very tearfully pious, and there was much 
 praying in the household. 
 
TALES OF JAPAN 295 
 
 The stray orphan, whom the wealthy 
 merchant married for her beauty and per 
 sonal charms,, died a wife of a samurai; 
 but she never found out who her parents 
 were. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 >DS 
 FCB28195BI0 
 
 
 tf s 
 REC D L 
 
 MAR 2 6 IS! 
 
 w STACKS 
 
 AMR 2 7 1958 
 
 LD 21-100m-7, 52(A2528sl6)476 
 
 "28Jan 60GIVI 
 
 REC D LD 
 
 REC D LD 
 
 AUG12 64-1P 
 
YB 32C72 
 
 M164284 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY