お伽草紙 English

"Ah, there it goes."

says the father, setting down his pen and rising to his feet.

An ordinary air-raid warning won't budge him, but once the anti-aircraft guns start up, he drops his work, pulls the air-raid hood over his five-year-old daughter's head, gathers her in his arms, and ducks into the shelter.

The mother is already crouched at the back of the shelter, the two-year-old boy strapped to her back.

"Sounds close, doesn't it."

"Yes. This shelter really is cramped, though."

"Is that so."

says the father, sounding faintly put out, "but this size is just right. Dig it any deeper and you risk being buried alive."

"Still, you might have made it a little wider."

"Mm, well, that's true, but the ground's frozen hard now, so digging is difficult. One of these days—"

and with such evasive remarks he silences the mother and turns his ear to the air-defense report on the radio.

Once the mother's complaints have subsided, it is the five-year-old girl's turn: she begins insisting that they leave the shelter already.

The only way to soothe her is with a picture book.

Momotaro, Kachikachi Yama, the Tongue-Cut Sparrow, the Stolen Wen, Urashima-san — the father reads these aloud to his child.

This father, shabbily dressed and dim of face though he looks, is by nature no ordinary man.

He is one who has mastered that truly peculiar art of inventing stories.

Once upon a time, a story of long, long ago.

So he reads, in a strange, vacant-sounding voice, and yet even as he does, quite of its own accord, an altogether different tale is fermenting away in his breast.

The Stolen Wen

Once upon a time, a story of long, long ago.

On his right cheek, right there, a bothersome

wen — the old man who had it.

This old man, it seems, lived at the foot of Mount Tsurugi, in Awa, on the island of Shikoku.

(This is merely how it feels to me; there is no particular source for it.

The Stolen Wen appears originally to derive from the Uji Shui Monogatari, but sitting in an air-raid shelter is no place to go chasing up original sources.

And it isn't only the Stolen Wen — take Urashima-san, the tale I mean to take up next: the facts are duly set down in the Nihon Shoki, there is a long poem on Urashima in the Manyoshu besides, and something answering to the story is handed down in the Tango Fudoki and the Honcho Shinsenden and the like, and then quite recently there is Ogai's play, and didn't Shoyo too set this story to dance-drama once? — at any rate, from Noh and Kabuki down to the hand-dances of geisha, this Urashima-san turns up everywhere, in the greatest profusion.

I have a habit of giving away or selling off any book I've read almost as soon as I've finished it, so I have never in my life kept anything one could call a library.

And so, at a time like this, I would ordinarily have to go traipsing about hunting up some book I once read, trusting to a hazy memory — but that, just now, is plainly out of the question.

I am, at this moment, squatting in a shelter.

And on my knees there lies open nothing more than a single picture book.

I must, for now, abandon all textual scholarship on these stories and content myself with simply unspooling my own solitary fancies.

No — indeed, that may well make for a livelier, more entertaining tale in the end.

So, in a kind of question-and-answer with himself that smacks of sour grapes, he tells himself — and now, that peculiar personage, the father,

Once upon a time, a story of long, long ago.

reads on, there in the corner of the shelter, from the picture book, while in his heart he sketches out a new story entirely apart from the one in its pages.)

This old man was exceedingly fond of drink.

A drinking man is, in his own household, as a rule a solitary sort of creature.

Whether he drinks because he is solitary, or has come to be solitary because his family, disliking his drinking, has naturally drawn away from him, is a question that would likely end, like clapping one's two palms together and trying to decide which palm made the sound, in nothing but affected hair-splitting.

In any case, this old man always wore a gloomy face at home.

Not that his household was in any way a bad one, mind you.

The old woman was hale and hearty.

Nearly seventy now, and yet her back was not bent, and there was still a coolness about her eyes.

In her youth, they said, she had been quite the beauty.

Taciturn since girlhood, she simply threw herself, in all earnestness, into her housework.

"Ah, it's spring now. The cherries have bloomed."

the old man would say, quite pleased with himself, and even then

"Is that so."

she would answer, without the least show of interest, and add, "Do move aside a moment. I'm going to sweep here."

That was all.

The old man's face would fall.

This old man also had a son, already nearly forty, and this son was a model of good conduct rare in all the world — he drank no wine, smoked no tobacco, and what's more he never laughed, never grew angry, never rejoiced, but simply worked the fields in silence, so that not one soul in the neighborhood failed to hold him in awe, and he had won himself the lofty title of the Sage of Awa, and he took no wife and shaved no beard, so much so that one might almost have suspected him of being made of wood and stone — in short, this old man's household was, one is obliged to say, a truly admirable household in every respect.

And yet the old man could not shake a certain gloom.

And so, hesitant though he was before the rest of the family, he found he simply could not help wanting to drink.

But drinking at home only made his gloom the deeper.

Neither the old woman nor the son, the Sage of Awa, ever scolded the old man for his drinking.

They simply ate their rice in silence beside him while he sipped, little by little, at his evening cup.

"Now then, say,"

the old man, growing a little tipsy, would find himself wanting someone to talk to, and would come out with some trifling remark.

"Spring's really here at last. The swallows have come too."

It was hardly a thing that needed saying.

Both the old woman and the son held their tongues.

"'A moment of a spring evening is worth a thousand pieces of gold,' is it."

he would murmur, again quite unnecessarily.

"Thank you for the meal."

said the Sage of Awa, finishing his rice, and rising with a reverent bow toward his tray.

"Well, I suppose I'll have my rice now too."

the old man would say sorrowfully, and turn his cup face down.

That was, more or less, how it always went when he drank at home.

One day, fine weather from the morning on,

off to the mountain he goes, to gather brushwood.

This old man's one pleasure, on a fine day, was to hang a gourd flask at his hip and climb Mount Tsurugi to gather up firewood.

When he had tired himself out sufficiently with the gathering, he would sit himself down cross-legged, grandly, upon a rock, and — ahem!

— clear his throat once, with great self-importance,

"Now that's a fine view, that is."

he would say, and then leisurely take a drink of the sake from the gourd at his hip.

His face, at such times, was truly the picture of pleasure.

He seemed a wholly different man from the one he was at home.

The one thing that never changed was the great wen on his right cheek.

This wen had appeared some twenty years before, in the autumn of the year the old man turned fifty: his right cheek grew strangely warm and itchy, and then little by little it began to swell, and the more he rubbed and stroked it the bigger it grew, until at last the old man, with a lonesome sort of laugh, said,

"Well now, I've gone and grown myself a fine grandchild."

he said, but his son the sage answered, in dead earnest,

"No child is ever born from a cheek."

— a most deflating remark — and the old woman, for her part,

"It isn't anything life-threatening, I hope."

asked, without so much as a smile, just that one question, and showed no further interest in the wen whatsoever.

The neighbors, by contrast, were sympathetic, and would offer him words of concern — however did such a wen come about, doesn't it hurt, it must be a terrible bother — and so on.

But the old man only laughed and shook his head.

Far from being a bother, the old man had by now come truly to think of this wen as his own dear grandchild, the one companion who consoled him in his loneliness, and each morning when he washed his face he took special care to pour clear water over the wen and cleanse it thoroughly.

And on a day like today, drinking alone up in the mountains and in good spirits, the wen made an especially convenient conversation partner, one the old man could not do without.

The old man sat cross-legged upon the rock, and as he drank the sake from his gourd, he stroked the wen on his cheek and said,

"Now, now, there's nothing to be afraid of. No need to hold back at all. Every man ought to get drunk now and then. Even earnestness has its proper limits. The Sage of Awa, indeed — my, my, how impressive. I do beg your pardon. So very great a man, is he."

and so he went on, whispering his little grudges against this person or that into the wen's ear, and then — ahem!

— he gave a loud clearing of his throat.

Suddenly, it grew dark.

A wind came roaring in,

and rain too came pouring down.

A spring shower is a rare thing.

But on so high a mountain as Tsurugi, one must suppose such freaks of weather occur often enough.

The mountain went white with a haze of rain, and pheasants and copper pheasants sprang up here and there, flap-flap, darting swift as arrows into the forest to escape the wet.

The old man, unruffled, only smiled and said,

"It's not so bad, this wen going all cool from the rain."

and he sat on a while longer cross-legged on the rock, watching the rain-swept scene, but the rain only grew stronger, showing no sign at all of letting up, so that at last,

"Well now, this has gone and got a bit too cool for comfort."

he said, rising to his feet, and after one great sneeze, he shouldered the brushwood he had gathered and slipped quietly in among the trees.

The woods were in great confusion, crowded with birds and beasts sheltering from the rain.

"There now, pardon me. Just pardon me, if you would."

said the old man, greeting the monkeys and the hares and the mountain doves one after another in high good humor as he made his way deeper into the woods, until he came to the wide hollow at the base of a great old mountain cherry tree and crawled inside.

"Ah, now this is a fine parlor. What do you say, everyone,"

he called out to the hares, "there's no fine old woman or sage in this parlor, so don't be shy, come right in, all of you."

and so he carried on, thoroughly delighted with himself, until before long he was fast asleep, snoring a small, peaceful snore.

A drinking man, drunk, will say all manner of foolish things, but for the most part, as here, there is no real harm in him.

While waiting for the evening shower to pass,

weariness must have overtaken the old man,

for before he knew it he had fallen sound asleep.

The mountain cleared, without a cloud left,

and turned into a bright moonlit night.

This moon was the waning moon of spring.

Pale green, one might call it — the moon hung in a sky like water, and moonlight came spilling down through the woods too, scattered thick as pine needles.

But the old man slept on, still breathing softly and evenly.

A bat came fluttering, flap-flap, out of the hollow of the tree.

The old man woke with a start, and was startled all over again to find night had already fallen.

"This is bad."

he said, and the first thing that rose before his eyes was the earnest face of that old woman of his, and the solemn face of the sage — ah, this has gone and turned into a terrible fix, those two have never once scolded me, but still, coming home this late is bound to make for an awkward business — well now, is there any sake left? — and he shook the gourd, and from the bottom came the faint sound of a little sloshing.

"There's some left, after all."

he said, suddenly rallying, and drained it to the very last drop, and grew pleasantly drunk. "Why, look, the moon's out. 'A moment of a spring evening—'"

he murmured on, quite unnecessarily, as he crawled out of the hollow of the tree, and then

Why now, what's this clamor,

how strange, when I look — is it all a dream?

is how matters stood.

Behold.

There, in the meadow deep in the woods, an utterly unearthly, incomprehensible spectacle was unfolding.

As for what an oni actually is, I could not say.

I have never seen one, you see.

Ever since childhood I have been shown pictures of them to the point of weariness, but I have yet to be granted the honor of an actual, personal encounter.

There seem to be various kinds of oni, at that.

Given that one calls something a "×××× oni" or a "×××× oni" to mean some hateful, detestable thing, I had assumed it must be, at any rate, a creature of a thoroughly ugly and vicious character — and yet then, on the other hand, one finds in the new-book column of the newspaper some phrase like "a masterpiece by the demon-genius Mr. So-and-So of the literary world," and I find myself thoroughly at a loss.

Surely that Mr. So-and-So did not use so strange and suspicious a word as "demon-genius" in that book column meaning to expose, and thereby warn the world of, the fact that his talent was as ugly and monstrous as an oni's.

And in the most extreme cases, people go so far as to bestow on Mr. So-and-So the rude, dreadful epithet "a devil of literature," and I would think that surely, whatever else, that Mr. So-and-So must take great offense — and yet that does not seem to be the case either; word has it that, far from minding so thoroughly rude and ugly a nickname, the gentleman rather welcomes it, and secretly permits himself to be called by this bizarre title — and hearing such things, I, in my foolishness, can only grow more bewildered still.

That red-faced creature in the tiger-skin loincloth, wielding some crude iron club or other — that this should be the very god of all the arts is something I simply cannot bring myself to believe.

I have long entertained the foolish private opinion that such difficult words as "demon-genius" or "devil of literature" would be better left unused — though that may only be owing to the narrowness of my own experience, and perhaps oni do indeed come in many varieties.

If I were to peek into some Japanese encyclopedia at a moment like this, I daresay I too could instantly transform myself into a man of broad learning, the object of veneration among the old and young, men and women alike (which is, after all, generally how your so-called men of learning are made), and put on a knowing face and hold forth at great, tedious length on the subject of oni — but unfortunately I am squatting in a shelter, with nothing on my knees but a single child's picture book, spread open.

I have no choice but to draw my conclusions from the pictures in this book alone.

Behold.

There, in a fairly wide meadow deep in the woods, some dozen-odd figures — or should I say, some dozen-odd beasts — in any case, unmistakably wearing tiger-skin loincloths, those great red red creatures, sat in a circle, in the midst of a banquet beneath the moon.

The old man was startled at first, but a drinking man, however spineless and useless he may be when sober, will show, once drunk, a boldness of spirit quite beyond the ordinary run of men.

The old man, just now, was pleasantly tipsy.

He had become, for the moment, a man of no small courage, one who feared neither that solemn old woman of his nor that model of good conduct, his sage of a son.

Confronted with this bizarre scene before his eyes, he showed none of the unseemly cowardice of, say, losing the use of his legs.

Still on all fours, just as he had crawled from the hollow, he gazed intently at the strange banquet ahead, and

"They look like they're having a pleasant enough drink."

he murmured, and then, from somewhere deep in his chest, a curious kind of pleasure came welling up.

A drinking man, it seems, feels a certain pleasure even at the sight of other people drinking.

He is, one supposes, no egoist.

He carries about him, that is, something akin to a broad benevolence, the sort of feeling that would raise a toast to the good fortune of the house next door.

He wishes to be drunk himself, but if his neighbor too can be drunk and merry along with him, his own joy seems to double for it.

The old man knew well enough, for his part.

He grasped at once, instinctively, that these great red creatures before him, neither quite human nor quite animal, belonged to that fearsome tribe called oni.

The tiger-skin loincloths alone left no room for doubt.

But just now these oni were in high good humor, thoroughly drunk.

And the old man was drunk too.

This, one cannot help feeling, was bound to stir up a sense of kinship.

The old man, still on all fours, went on watching the strange banquet beneath the moon.

Oni though they were, the old man could tell that these oni before his eyes were not of that wicked, malicious breed one means by a "×××× oni" or a "×××× oni" — their faces were red and fearsome enough, but they seemed, rather, to be terribly cheerful, innocent oni.

And in this judgment the old man was, on the whole, quite correct.

That is to say, these oni were of an exceedingly mild-mannered sort, the kind one might call the hermits of Mount Tsurugi.

An altogether different breed from your oni of hell.

For one thing, they carried none of those dangerous iron clubs.

This alone, one might say, was proof enough that they bore no ill will.

But hermits though they were, they were nothing like those sages of the bamboo grove, fleeing into the bamboo with more knowledge than they knew what to do with — the minds of these hermits of Mount Tsurugi were, on the contrary, exceedingly foolish.

I have heard a wonderfully simple theory, since the character for "sennin" is written with "mountain" and "person," that one may as well call anyone at all who lives deep in the mountains a sennin — and if one were to follow that theory, then these hermits of Mount Tsurugi, however foolish their minds, might well deserve to be granted the lofty title of sennin too.

In any case, this band of great red creatures amusing themselves at their moonlit banquet were, it seemed, rather more properly called hermits, or sennin, than oni.

I have already said their minds were foolish, but to judge from the state of their banquet — raising meaningless strange cries, slapping their knees and roaring with laughter, or leaping up and flinging themselves about at random, or curling their huge bodies into balls and rolling round and round the circle from one end to the other, apparently under the impression that this constituted dancing — one can well imagine the level of their intelligence, and their utter lack of any real skill.

This alone, it seems to me, is proof enough that words like "demon-genius" or "devil of literature" are quite meaningless.

That such foolish, talentless creatures should be the gods of all the arts is something I simply cannot bring myself to believe.

The old man too was astonished at this witless dancing.

He chuckled to himself, and

"My, my, what clumsy dancing. Suppose I show you all a bit of hand-dancing myself, shall I."

he murmured.

The old man, so fond of dancing,

leapt right out and began at once,

and his wen went wobbling and swaying about,

which made it terribly funny, terribly amusing.

The old man had the courage that comes of being pleasantly drunk.

And more than that, he felt a real fondness for these oni, so that with nothing at all to fear, he leapt into the middle of the circle and danced the Awa Odori he was so proud of, singing out in a fine voice the local Awa ditty:

A girl with her hair up like a bride, an old woman in a wig —

small wonder either might be led astray by a red sash.

Won't the bride come too, in her sedge hat — come, come along.

— some such Awa folk verse, sung out in a fine, ringing voice.

The oni were delighted beyond words, letting out strange cries of kya-kya, keta-keta, and rolling about in laughter with drool and tears running down their faces.

Warming to it, the old man went on,

Pass through Otani and it's nothing but stones,

pass through Sasayama and it's nothing but bamboo grass,

he sang on, raising his voice higher still, and danced away with ever greater lightness and skill.

The oni, in their tremendous delight,

said they would surely come again on some moonlit night,

and asked that he dance for them once more,

and as a token, a pledge of that promise,

they would take something precious of his into their keeping.

So they said, and the oni put their heads together, whispering among themselves — that lump on his cheek there, gleaming so, surely it must be some rare and precious treasure; if we keep hold of that, he's sure to come back again — reasoning thus, in their foolishness, they set upon the wen at once and plucked it clean off.

Ignorant though they were, perhaps their long years of dwelling deep in the mountains had taught them some trick akin to sorcery, after all.

and without the least trouble, they plucked the wen off, clean and neat.

The old man, startled,

"Now, wait, that won't do at all. That's my grandchild, that is."

he said, but the oni only raised a great, triumphant shout of joy.

It's morning, the dew-lit road all shining,

and the old man, his wen taken from him,

strokes his cheek, looking rather forlorn,

and goes on down the mountain.

The wen had been the lonely old man's one and only conversation partner, so having it taken from him left him a little sad.

But then again, the morning breeze stroking his now-lighter cheek was not an unpleasant feeling either.

On the whole, then, neither loss nor gain, one might say, each with its own merits and drawbacks — perhaps the one clear profit was simply that he had, for once in a long while, sung and danced to his heart's content?

So he thought, quite carefree, as he made his way down the mountain, when on the road he ran straight into his son the sage, on his way out to the fields.

"Good morning to you."

said the sage, removing his head-cloth and offering a solemn morning greeting.

"Ah — well."

was all the old man could manage, quite flustered.

And with just that, the two parted ways.

Seeing that his father's wen had vanished overnight, even the sage, for all his composure, was somewhat startled inwardly — but he felt it would go against the way of the sage to make any critical remark whatever about his parents' appearance, and so, pretending not to notice, he said nothing and simply went on.

When he got home, the old woman said,

"Welcome home."

quite calmly, and asked nothing at all about where he had been the night before or what had happened, but only murmured, low, "The miso soup has gone cold, I'm afraid,"

and set about preparing the old man's breakfast.

"No, no, cold is fine. No need to warm it up on my account."

said the old man, unduly deferential, making himself small, and took his place at the breakfast tray.

As the old woman served his rice and he ate, the old man was fairly bursting to tell her of the strange happenings of the night before.

But he was so overawed by the old woman's dignified manner that the words caught somewhere in his throat and he could say nothing at all.

He ate his rice with his head down, in forlorn silence.

"That wen looks like it's shriveled up some."

the old woman said, out of nowhere.

"Mm."

He no longer wanted to say anything at all.

"It must have burst, and the fluid came out."

the old woman said, quite unconcerned, and went on with her composure undisturbed.

"Mm."

"I expect the fluid will collect again and it'll swell back up."

"I expect so."

In the end, then, in this old man's household, the matter of the wen amounted to no matter at all.

Now, in this old man's neighborhood, as it happened, there lived another old man, one who had a bothersome wen of his own, on his left cheek.

And this second old man truly hated his wen as the bothersome thing it was — this wen, he thought, has been nothing but a hindrance to my advancement in the world, on account of this wen how many times have people looked down on me, laughed at me — and several times a day he would peer into his mirror and sigh, and he had schemed to grow his side-whiskers long so as to bury the wen among them and hide it from sight, but alas, the crown of the wen still showed through the waves of his white whiskers, vivid as the first sunrise of the year, so that it made, if anything, all the more of a spectacle for the whole world to marvel at.

To begin with, this second old man's character and bearing were by no means base.

His frame was imposing, his nose large, his eyes sharp and keen.

His speech and bearing were weighty, and he seemed possessed of ample judgment and discretion.

His clothes, too, were splendid enough, however you looked at it, and he was said to have some learning besides, and his fortune, they say, was so much greater than that drinking old man's as to be beyond comparison, so that all the neighbors held this old man in some awe, and honored him with such respectful titles as "Master"

or "Sir",

and in every way he was a fine, respectable gentleman — but on account of that bothersome wen on his left cheek, the master was gloomy day and night, and took no pleasure in anything.

This old man's wife was remarkably young.

Thirty-six years old.

Not so very beautiful, but fair-skinned and plump, and always laughing and carrying on cheerfully, a touch coquettishly.

They had one daughter, twelve or thirteen, quite the pretty girl, though somewhat inclined to impertinence.

But mother and daughter got on famously, always laughing and making a fuss over something or other, so that despite the master's habitually sour, bitten-bug expression, the household on the whole struck people as a bright and cheerful one.

"Mother, why is Father's wen so red, do you think. It looks just like an octopus's head."

said the impertinent daughter, offering her blunt opinion without the least reserve.

The mother did not scold her, only laughed, ho-ho-ho, and said,

"That's true, but it also looks a bit like he's got a wooden temple-drum hanging off his cheek, doesn't it."

"Enough of that!"

the master burst out angrily, glaring at his wife and daughter, and sprang to his feet and withdrew to the dim inner room, where he stole a look in the mirror, and, thoroughly downcast,

"This is hopeless."

he muttered.

He had brooded so far as to think he might just as well slice it off with a knife, or die for all he cared, when word chanced to reach his ear that the wen on that drinking old man next door had, of late, up and vanished.

Under cover of night, the master crept in secret to the drinking old man's thatched hut, and there had the whole strange tale of the moonlit banquet related to him.

Hearing it, he was overjoyed,

"Very well then! I too shall by all means

have this wen taken from me."

he declared, rousing himself with resolve.

Fortunately the moon was out that night as well.

The master, like a warrior marching off to battle, eyes blazing, his mouth clenched tight into a grim line, resolved that this night, whatever it took, he would dance a truly magnificent dance and win the admiration of those oni, and that should they by any chance fail to be moved, why, he would cut down the lot of them with this iron war-fan he carried — mere foolish drunkards of oni, what could they possibly amount to — and so, whether he was setting off to show the oni a dance or to go slay them, it was hard to say which, but in any case, with fearsome resolve, iron fan in his right hand and shoulders squared, he pressed on deep into Mount Tsurugi.

In this way, the arts practiced by a man whose mind has hardened solid around what one might call "the consciousness of the masterpiece"

tend, more often than not, to come out badly.

This old man's dance too, weighed down with far too much fierce resolve, ended in utter and complete failure.

The old man advanced, reverent and solemn, into the middle of the oni's banqueting circle, and,

"Pray excuse my poor showing."

he said with a bow, and with a soft snap opened his iron fan, and stood gazing sternly up at the moon, motionless as a great tree.

After a while he gave a light, single stamp of his foot, and slowly began to intone, in a low groaning voice:

"I am a priest who passes this one summer at Naruto in Awa. Since it was here that the whole house of the Heike met its end, I grieve for them, and every night I come out to this shore to offer up sutras on their behalf. By the rocky hillside, awhile among the pines rooted in stone, awhile among the pines rooted in stone — whose night boat is that, one cannot tell, amid the white waves, only the sound of oars, on this still night at Naruto shore, this still night at the shore. Yesterday passed, today draws to its close, and tomorrow too shall surely be the same."

He shifted, ever so slightly, with a soft slide of the foot, and again stood stock-still, gazing sternly up at the moon.

The oni, utterly aghast,

rose up one after another and fled,

away deep into the mountains.

"Wait, please!"

the master cried out in a voice of anguish, chasing after the fleeing oni, "if you run off on me now, I'll never hear the end of it."

"Run, run! That might be Shoki himself!"

"No, no, I am not Shoki."

the master too, desperate now, clung to them as they fled, "I have a favor to beg of you. This wen — please, please, take it from me."

"What, a wen?"

the oni, in their panic, had misheard him, "ah, is that all? Why, that's the precious thing we're keeping for that old fellow the other night, but if you want it so badly, you can have it, I suppose. Only please, spare us that dance — it's killing our nice buzz. Please. Let go of us. We've got to go off somewhere else now and start drinking all over again. Please. Please, just let go. Hey, someone give this strange fellow back the wen we picked up the other day. Says he wants it, apparently."

So the oni took the wen

they'd been keeping, and stuck it right onto his right cheek,

and my, my, now he had two wens after all,

dangling, dangling, oh how heavy.

Looking thoroughly ashamed of himself, the old man

made his way back home to the village.

A truly pitiful outcome, this.

In fairy tales, as a rule, the ending has it that a man who has done some wicked deed meets with some wicked punishment for it — but this old man had not, in fact, done anything wicked at all.

Was it not simply that, in his excess of tension, his dance had come out looking strange?

Nor, for that matter, was there any villain to speak of in this second old man's household either.

And neither that drinking old man, nor his family, nor the oni who lived on Mount Tsurugi, had done the least wicked thing.

In other words, this tale contains not a single incident of what one might call "injustice",

and yet, all the same, an unhappy man came out of it.

And that is precisely why, if one tries to extract some everyday moral lesson from this tale of the Stolen Wen, the whole business turns hopelessly tangled.

Well then, just what did you think you were doing, writing this tale? — should some short-tempered reader press me with that question, I have no answer to give but this.

It is the tragicomedy of character.

At the bottom of human life, this problem is always flowing along, underneath everything.

Urashima-san

A man named Urashima Taro seems actually to have lived, at some place called Mizunoe, in Tango.

Tango, that is to say, the northern part of what is now Kyoto Prefecture.

I have heard tell that in some remote, cold village on that northern coast there stands, even now, a shrine dedicated to Taro.

I have never been there myself, but from what people say, it seems to be a rather bleak and desolate stretch of shore.

There our own Urashima Taro made his home.

He did not, of course, live alone.

He had a father, and a mother.

He had a younger brother, and a younger sister.

And he had, besides, a great many servants.

In short, he was the eldest son of an old and well-known family on that coast.

The eldest son of an old family seems always to have carried, in every age, one particular trait in common.

A certain refinement of taste — this, precisely.

Call it, generously, elegance.

Call it, less generously, self-indulgence.

But even calling it self-indulgence, it is a thing of quite a different flavor from the so-called dissipation of womanizing and drunkenness.

The sort of dissolute rake who guzzles great vulgar quantities of sake and gets himself tangled up with women of low character, dragging his parents' and siblings' good name through the mud, seems most often to turn out among second and third sons.

The eldest son has none of that savagery in him.

Having inherited, as they say, a fixed livelihood from his ancestors, he naturally comes to possess a fixed and settled heart as well, and is, on the whole, quite properly mannered.

That is to say, the eldest son's indulgence is not fanatical like his younger brothers' drunken excess — it is merely a pastime, pursued on the side.

And so long as that diversion won him, from others, the recognition of a certain tastefulness befitting the eldest son of an old family, and let him himself grow pleasantly intoxicated with the elegance of his own way of living, he was, with that alone, entirely satisfied.

"Big brother has no spirit of adventure in him at all, that's his trouble."

said his sister, a tomboy of sixteen that year.

"He's stingy, is what he is."

"No, that's not it."

objected his brother, a rowdy sort of eighteen-year-old, "he's just too good-looking for his own good."

This younger brother was dark-skinned and rather plain of face.

Urashima Taro, hearing these blunt appraisals from his younger brother and sister, did not trouble himself to grow angry, but only smiled a wry smile and said,

"Letting your curiosity run wild is one kind of adventure, and holding your curiosity in check is, just as much, another kind of adventure — either way is dangerous. A man has something called a destiny, you know."

and with that, in a tone as though he had attained some profound enlightenment though nobody could quite make out what he meant, he would fold his arms behind him and go out of the house alone, wandering here and there along the shore, murmuring

"Of the cut rushes"

scattering loose—

one glimpses

the fisherfolk's boats"

— fragments of that same sort of elegant-sounding verse he was so fond of —

"Why must people go on criticizing one another to get through life at all?"

he would ponder over this artless question, shaking his head with an air of magnanimity, "the bush clover on the beach, the little crabs creeping by, the wild geese resting in the inlet — not one of them sits in judgment on me. Surely people ought to be the same. Every man has his own manner of living. Is it really impossible for people simply to respect one another's manner? Here I am, taking care to live a refined life that troubles no one, and still people go on saying this and that about me. What a tiresome business."

and he would heave a faint sigh.

"I say, I say there, Urashima-san."

came, just then, a small voice from underfoot.

This, now, is that famous turtle in question.

Not that I mean to play the know-it-all, but there are, in fact, various kinds of turtle.

Those that live in fresh water and those that live in salt water naturally differ somewhat in shape.

The kind that lies sprawled out sunning its shell at the edge of the pond by some shrine to Benten — that, I suppose, would be what's called an ishigame, a pond turtle, and picture books often show Urashima-san riding on the back of just such a pond turtle, shading his eyes with one hand and gazing off toward the Dragon Palace far away — but a turtle like that would choke on the salt water and drop dead the instant it went into the sea.

But the turtle that attends, at a wedding, on the miniature Mount Horai of the ceremonial tray, keeping company with the crane beside the old man and old woman of good fortune, the one they praise saying the crane lives a thousand years and the turtle ten thousand — that, it would seem, is likewise this same pond turtle, and one rarely sees a hawksbill or a soft-shelled turtle set up on such a tray.

So it is only natural that the picture-book illustrators too should have fallen, without much thought, into assuming (since Horai and the Dragon Palace are, after all, much the same sort of place) that Urashima-san's guide must likewise be this same pond turtle.

And yet it does seem rather unnatural that it should paddle along with those clumsy claw-fitted hands of its, diving deep down into the sea bottom.

This is surely a job that calls for someone with broad, fin-shaped hands, like a hawksbill's, to part the water at a leisurely pace.

But then again — and again I do not mean to play the know-it-all — there is one more troublesome problem here.

I have heard that in this country the hawksbill turtle is native to the southern regions — the Ogasawara Islands, the Ryukyus, Taiwan, and so on.

To the shores of that stretch of the Japan Sea, the north coast of Tango, a hawksbill, regrettably, is not at all likely to come crawling up.

So I did consider, for a moment, simply making Urashima-san a native of Ogasawara or the Ryukyus instead, but Urashima-san has evidently, from ages past, been fixed as a man of Mizunoe in Tango, and what's more there stands, to this day, an Urashima Shrine on that north coast of Tango, so that even granting that a fairy tale is by definition a fanciful invention, out of simple respect for Japanese history one cannot get away with quite so careless a fabrication.

There is nothing for it: a hawksbill from Ogasawara or the Ryukyus is simply going to have to make the journey all the way to the Japan Sea.

But then again, that won't do either, comes the protest from the biologists' side, and I have no wish to be looked down on with the usual complaint that literary men lack any scientific spirit.

And so I gave it some thought.

Is there not, besides the hawksbill, some other salt-water turtle with fin-shaped hands?

Was there not something called a loggerhead, a red sea turtle?

Some ten years back (I have gotten old, haven't I) I once spent a summer at an inn on the Numazu shore, and during that stay a sea turtle came ashore on that beach with a shell said to measure nearly five feet across, and the fishermen made a great commotion over it, and I certainly saw it myself, with my own eyes.

I recall it was called a red sea turtle.

That's the one.

Let it be that one.

If it came ashore at Numazu, then I should think it wouldn't cause too great an uproar in the biological world for it to make its way around to the Japan Sea side and come ashore on the beach at Tango.

And if people still want to kick up a fuss over currents and whatnot, then I really couldn't say.

We shall simply put on an air of composure and say that its turning up in a place it had no business turning up in is precisely the mystery of it — this can be no ordinary sea turtle.

This thing called the scientific spirit is not, after all, so very much to be relied upon.

Are not theorems and axioms themselves nothing but hypotheses?

No call to go putting on such airs.

Now then, that red sea turtle (the name red sea turtle is rather a mouthful and tangles up the tongue, so hereafter I shall simply call it the turtle) stretched out its neck, looked up at Urashima-san, and

"I say, I say there."

it called out, and went on, "No wonder you don't recognize me. I understand, I understand."

it said.

Urashima, startled, said,

"Why, it's you. Aren't you the turtle I saved the other day? Have you been loafing about here all this while?"

This, then, was that very turtle: the one Urashima-san had seen the children tormenting, and, saying how pitiful it was, had bought off them and set free in the sea.

"'Loafing about,' that's a cold thing to say. I'm hurt, young master. Little as I look it, I've been coming to this beach every single day and every single night ever since, waiting for you to show up, all so I could repay you for your kindness."

"That was thoughtless of you. Reckless, even, one might say. What would you have done if the children had spotted you again? This time you'd hardly have come back alive."

"Get you, putting on such fine airs. If I'd been caught again, I meant for you to buy me off again, that's all. Sorry to be so thoughtless. I just couldn't help wanting to see you one more time, young master, no matter what — and that 'couldn't help it' right there, that's the weakness of a fellow who's gone and fallen for someone. Won't you buy my spirit, at least?"

Urashima gave a wry laugh and

"What a shameless creature."

he muttered.

The turtle caught him up on it, and

"Well now, young master, you're contradicting yourself, aren't you. Just a moment ago you were going on about how you hate being criticized, and here you are, criticizing me up and down yourself — thoughtless, reckless, and now shameless too. You're the shameless one, if you ask me. I've got my own way of living, same as you, so you might show it a little respect."

and turned the tables on him beautifully.

Urashima reddened, and

"What I said was not criticism. Call it admonishment, if you like. Or remonstrance. As they say, remonstrance may grate on the ear, yet it serves one's conduct."

he said, covering himself with high-sounding words.

"If only you didn't put on such airs, you'd be a decent sort."

muttered the turtle under its breath, and went on, "Well, never mind, I'll say no more. Just take a seat on my shell here."

Urashima, aghast, said,

"Now what on earth are you saying. I have no taste for such barbarous behavior. To go sitting on a turtle's shell — that, I daresay, would be a kind of madness. It is certainly no elegant gesture."

"Who cares about that. I'm only trying to take you to the Dragon Palace, as thanks for the other day. Come on now, hurry up and climb onto my shell."

"What, the Dragon Palace?"

he burst out laughing, "Don't be absurd. You must have had a bit too much sake and gotten yourself drunk, saying such outlandish things. The Dragon Palace has been sung of in poems and handed down as a tale of the immortals since ages past, but that is a thing which does not exist in this world, you understand? It is, from ancient times, nothing more than a beautiful dream, a yearning, if you will, of us men of refined taste."

and his tone, in its very elegance, came out rather affected.

This time it was the turtle's turn to burst out laughing, and

"I can't stand it. You can give me your lecture on elegance later, at your leisure — for now, just trust what I'm telling you and get on my shell. Your trouble is you simply don't know the taste of adventure."

"Well now, you're just as rude as my sister, saying the same sort of thing. It's quite true that I have no great fondness for what people call adventure. It's a kind of acrobatics, if you think about it. However flashy it looks, it's vulgar all the same. One might even call it a deviant path. It shows no resignation before one's destiny. No cultivation in tradition. It's the very picture of a blind man unafraid of snakes. It is the sort of thing that makes us men of true and proper refinement frown in disgust. One might say we despise it. I would rather walk straight along the calm path our forebears laid down."

"Pff!"

the turtle burst out laughing again, "But that very path of your forebears, isn't that itself the path of adventure? No, it's because you use a clumsy word like 'adventure' that it starts sounding like something bloody and unsanitary, like some ruffian's business — how about calling it, instead, the power to believe. Only a man who can truly believe that beautiful flowers are blooming on the far side of that ravine will, without a moment's hesitation, catch hold of the wisteria vine and swing across to the other side. Other people take it for acrobatics, and either cheer him on or frown at him as some cheap showman courting popularity. But it is nothing whatsoever like a tightrope walker's stunt. The man swinging across the ravine on a wisteria vine only wants to see the flowers on the other side. He hasn't got any of that vulgar vanity about how he's off having an adventure right now. What's there to be proud of in any adventure? Don't be ridiculous. He believes. He believes, absolutely, that the flowers are there. That figure is only, for convenience's sake, what people happen to call adventure. To say you have no spirit of adventure is only to say you haven't got the capacity to believe in anything. Is believing vulgar? Is believing a deviant path? The trouble with you gentlemen is that you make your pride out of not believing anything, and that's a bad business. That's not intelligence, you know. It's something a good deal meaner than that. It's stinginess. It's proof that all you can think about is not wanting to lose out on anything. Don't worry, nobody's asking you for a thing. It's just that you people don't even know how to accept another's kindness honestly — always thinking, oh, what a bother it'll be to pay it back. Really, you men of refined taste are a stingy lot."

"What a cruel thing to say. My brother and sister go on and on at me, and now I come out to the beach and the very turtle I saved heaps the same sort of impertinent criticism on me. Really, anyone with no proper self-awareness of the pride of tradition will say whatever he pleases. Call it a kind of desperation, if you like. I understand everything perfectly well. It is not for me to say it myself, but there is a tremendous difference in station between your destiny and mine. We were different from the moment we were born. It is no doing of mine. It was granted from Heaven. But it seems to gall you people no end. Say what you like, you're only trying to drag my destiny down to the level of yours, but that's Heaven's own arrangement, quite beyond the reach of human affairs. You go blustering about taking me off to the Dragon Palace, scheming, it seems, to make yourself my equal — well, enough of that, I understand it all perfectly, so stop your useless struggling and go straight back down to your home at the bottom of the sea. Honestly, after I went to the trouble of saving you, it would all be for nothing if you got caught by the children again. It's you people who don't know how to accept another's kindness honestly."

"Heh heh,"

the turtle laughed, undaunted, "'went to the trouble of saving you,' now that's rich. That's just why gentlemen are such a trial. When you do somebody a kindness, it's a wonderful virtue, and all the while, deep down, you're rather expecting some repayment for it — but when it comes to someone else's kindness toward you, my, what fearsome caution, thinking to yourself how impossible it would be to become that fellow's equal — it's enough to make a body sick. Well, since you've made me say it, let me say it: you saved me because I was a turtle, and because the ones tormenting me were children. Stepping in to mediate between a turtle and some children costs you nothing afterward, does it. And besides, to children, even five mon is a great sum of money. Though I must say, five mon was quite the bargain price. I rather expected you'd have paid a bit more. Your stinginess left me quite astonished. When I found out my own body was worth a mere five mon, I felt pretty forlorn about it, I'll tell you. Still, it was only because the ones involved were a turtle and some children that you paid out even five mon to mediate. Pure whim, that's all it was. But if, that time, instead of a turtle and children, it had been, say, some rough fisherman bullying a sick beggar, you wouldn't have paid out five mon, no, not even one mon — you'd have just scowled and hurried on past, and that's the truth of it. You people can't bear to have the raw, desperate truth of human life thrust in your faces. It must feel to you as though someone were dumping filth all over your own precious noble destiny. Your kindness is nothing but play. A pleasure, an amusement. You saved me because I was a turtle. You gave the children money because they were children. But a rough fisherman and a sick beggar — that's absolutely out of the question. You simply cannot bear having your face brushed by the raw, rank wind of real life. You hate getting your hands dirty, that's all it is. Something like that, Urashima-san — that's what people call talking like you know it all. You won't get angry at me, will you? Because I'm fond of you, you see — or, hm, maybe you will get angry after all? The trouble with you folks of noble destiny is that you seem to think it's downright dishonorable to be liked by lowborn creatures like us."

"And I'm a turtle on top of it, no less.

Being liked by a turtle gives you the creeps, does it — well, forgive me for that, but liking and disliking aren't matters of logic.

It isn't that I like you because you saved me, and it isn't that I like you because you're a man of refined taste.

I just, somehow, plain like you.

And because I like you, I find myself wanting to speak ill of you and tease you.

That, in short, is simply how we reptiles go about showing our affection.

Well, I am a reptile, after all, kin to the snakes, so it's no wonder folks don't trust me much.

But I'm no serpent out of the Garden of Eden — begging your pardon, I'm a plain Japanese turtle.

I'm not scheming to tempt you into ruin by luring you off to the Dragon Palace.

Won't you buy my spirit, at least.

I just want to go and play with you, that's all.

I want to go play at the Dragon Palace.

There's none of that tiresome criticizing in that country.

Everyone there lives an easy, unhurried life.

So it's just the place for having a good time.

I can come up onto the land like this, and I can dive down to the bottom of the sea too, so I get to compare the two ways of living, and I must say, life on land is a noisy business.

You people criticize each other far too much.

Every last bit of conversation on land is either bad-mouthing someone else or advertising yourself.

It wears me right out.

Thanks to coming up onto the land like this every so often, I've caught a bit of the land-dweller's fever myself, and here I am spouting off this same sort of know-it-all criticism, and I do think to myself what a terrible influence it's been on me, and yet there's a flavor to this habit of criticizing that I just can't seem to give up, and I've even started feeling a little bored with life in the Dragon Palace, where there's no criticizing to be had.

I seem to have picked up a bad habit, all right.

Some kind of disease of civilization, I suppose.

By now I don't even know myself whether I'm a fish of the sea or a creature of the land.

Something like that bat, you know, the one nobody can tell is a bird or a beast.

It's become a sorry sort of nature for me.

I suppose you might call me a heretic of the sea bottom.

I'm finding it harder and harder to make myself at home back at the Dragon Palace, my old home — but I promise you this much, it's a fine place for having a good time.

Believe me.

It's a country of song and dance, fine food and drink.

It's just the place for you men of refined taste.

Weren't you just now lamenting from the bottom of your heart how much you hate being criticized? Well, there's no criticizing at all in the Dragon Palace."

Urashima had been quite worn down by the turtle's astonishing flood of talk, but that last remark caught at his heart all the same.

"If only, really, there were such a country."

"There, still doubting me, are you. I'm not telling you any lie. Why won't you believe me? I'm getting angry. Is that what a man of refined taste is — someone who never actually does anything, just goes around sighing with longing? How disgusting."

Even Urashima, mild-tempered as he was, could not simply back down after being abused so thoroughly.

"Well then, I suppose there's no help for it."

he said with a wry laugh, "as you wish — shall I try sitting on your shell, then."

"Everything you say rubs me the wrong way."

the turtle said, genuinely sulking now, "what do you mean, 'try' sitting on my shell? Trying to sit on it and sitting on it come to exactly the same thing in the end, don't they. Turning right on a whim while still full of doubt, and turning right with firm conviction — the fate that follows is the very same either way. Either way, there's no turning back. The instant you make the attempt, your fate is already settled, fixed. There is no such thing, in this life, as a mere trial. To try doing something is the very same as having done it. You people really are hopeless about accepting your own fate. You go on thinking you can always turn back."

"All right, all right, I understand. Then I'll believe you, and let you carry me!"

"Now you're talking."

No sooner had Urashima settled himself onto the turtle's shell than the turtle's back spread out, before his very eyes, to a size that could have held two tatami mats, and with a gentle sway it moved off and entered the sea.

It swam some hundred yards or so out from the shore, and then the turtle said,

"Close your eyes for a moment."

in a stern voice, and when Urashima obediently closed his eyes there came a sound like a sudden downpour, and a faint warmth wrapped around him, and a wind like a spring breeze, only a little heavier than a spring breeze, brushed at his earlobes.

"A thousand fathoms deep now."

said the turtle.

Urashima felt a tightness in his chest not unlike seasickness.

"May I be sick?"

he asked the turtle, still keeping his eyes shut.

"What, going to throw up, are you."

said the turtle, falling back into its earlier droll manner, "what a filthy passenger you make. Why, look at you, honest fool that you are, still keeping your eyes shut. That's exactly why I'm so fond of you, Taro. You can open your eyes now, you know. Once you open your eyes and take a look at the scenery all around, that queasy feeling of yours will clear right up."

When he opened his eyes there was only a hazy, murky vastness, a strange pale-green brightness, and nowhere any shadow at all — nothing but a boundless, formless expanse.

"Is this the Dragon Palace?"

said Urashima, in a drowsy, half-asleep sort of drawl.

"What are you talking about. We've only just now reached a thousand fathoms. The Dragon Palace is ten thousand fathoms down."

"Well, well."

Urashima let out a strange little sound.

"The sea really is a vast thing, isn't it."

"Raised on the shore and you talk like some monkey from deep in the mountains. It's just a little bigger than the ornamental pond at your house, that's all."

Whichever way he looked, before or behind, left or right, there was nothing but a hazy, boundless expanse, and looking down at his feet there was likewise only that pale-green faint brightness stretching on without limit, and looking up too there was, instead of a blue sky, only a vast, watery cavern, and aside from the two of them talking there was not a single sound to be heard, only that wind, like a spring breeze though somewhat more clinging than a spring breeze, tickling at Urashima's earlobes.

Before long Urashima made out, far off to the upper right, a faint smudge, about the size of a handful of scattered ash, and

"What's that. A cloud, is it?"

he asked the turtle.

"Don't be ridiculous. There's no such thing as clouds drifting about in the sea."

"Then what is it. It looks like a single drop of India ink let fall. Just some bit of drifting refuse, I suppose?"

"You really are dim, aren't you. You'd think a look would tell you. That's a great school of sea bream."

"Is that so? Rather a paltry-looking thing. Two or three hundred of them, I'd guess."

"You fool."

the turtle said with a scornful laugh, "Are you saying that in earnest?"

"Well then, two or three thousand."

"Do pull yourself together. Call it a rough five or six million."

"Five or six million? Don't try to frighten me."

The turtle grinned, and

"That's no school of bream. That's a fire in the sea. A terrible smoke, that is. Smoke that size, well, let's see, that would mean a stretch of ground burning as vast as twenty Japans put together."

"Now you're lying. As if fire could burn in the middle of the sea."

"Thoughtless, thoughtless. There's oxygen in the water too, you know. No reason at all why fire shouldn't burn."

"Don't try to fool me. That's ignorant sophistry. Joking aside, what on earth is that bit of rubbish-looking thing, really? A school of bream after all, I suppose? Surely it can't be a fire."

"No, it's a fire, all right. Now tell me, have you ever once stopped to think how it is that all the countless rivers of the land world pour into the sea, day and night without pause, and yet the sea's water never increases, never decreases, but always keeps to just the same amount? The sea has its troubles too, you know. Poured into that relentlessly, it would hardly know what to do with itself. So every now and then, in just such a fashion, it burns off the water it doesn't need. Ah, there it burns, there it burns, what a great fire it is."

"Now really, the smoke isn't spreading in the least. What on earth is that thing, honestly. Seeing how it hasn't moved a bit this whole time, it can't be a great school of fish either. Stop your mean-spirited jokes and just tell me plainly."

"Very well, I'll tell you plainly. That is the shadow of the moon."

"Now you're pulling my leg again, aren't you."

"No indeed. Down at the bottom of the sea, none of the shadows of the land world are cast, but the shadows of the heavenly bodies still fall straight down from directly overhead, so they are cast here too. Not only the moon's shadow — the shadows of the stars all fall here as well. That's how, in the Dragon Palace, we make our calendar and fix the four seasons, relying on those very shadows. That moon's shadow there is a little short of perfectly round, so I'd say today must be the thirteenth night of the month."

He said this in so earnest a tone that Urashima thought perhaps it might really be so after all, though something about it also struck him as rather odd.

But still, gazing across that boundless pale-green cavern to where, in one corner, some faint black speck lingered, to be told — even supposing it were a lie — that it was the moon's shadow gave Urashima, man of refined taste that he was, a far deeper sense of charm and stirred in him a far keener nostalgia than to have thought it merely a great school of bream, or a fire.

Before long the surroundings grew strangely dark, and with a tremendous roaring sound something like a violent gale came sweeping in, and Urashima very nearly tumbled off the turtle's back.

"Close your eyes again, just for a moment."

said the turtle, in a solemn tone, "this is just about the entrance to the Dragon Palace. When men go exploring the bottom of the sea, this is generally the point they take for the very floor of the ocean, and they turn back. You may well be the first human being ever to pass beyond this point — and perhaps the last as well."

It seemed to Urashima that the turtle gave a sudden, sharp flip, as if turning itself over.

And swimming on turned right over, that is, belly up, with Urashima clinging to the turtle's shell in a posture like a somersault half completed, and yet without ever slipping off, he felt the strange, quite mistaken sensation that the two of them, upside down, were sailing smoothly on and upward together.

"You can open your eyes now."

said the turtle, but by then that upside-down sensation had already vanished, and he found himself sitting quite properly upright on the turtle's shell, with the turtle swimming steadily on, down and down.

All around was a faint dimness, like the light of dawn, and far below his feet something dim and white came into view.

It looked, somehow, like a mountain.

It might also have looked like a row of towers standing close together, but it was far too vast to be mere towers.

"What's that. A mountain?"

"That's right."

"A mountain of the Dragon Palace?"

His voice had gone hoarse with excitement.

"That's right."

The turtle swam busily on.

"It's pure white. Could it be snowing?"

"My, folks with noble destinies really do think differently, don't they. Splendid, that is. Actually thinking it snows at the bottom of the sea."

"But you did say there was a fire at the bottom of the sea,"

said Urashima, meaning to get a bit of his own back, "so I daresay it might snow too. What with all that oxygen about, after all."

"Snow and oxygen aren't exactly close kin. If they're kin at all, it's about as close as wind and the price of buckets. Ridiculous. You won't get the better of me with a line like that. Really, you refined gentlemen are no good at all with a joke. How about 'snowflakes fall soft, but the road back home is hard' — not much good either? Still better than your oxygen line. Oxy-gen, oxy-jest, more like an oxy-moron. No saving oxygen, that one."

He simply could not out-talk the turtle.

Urashima said, with a wry laugh,

"By the way, that mountain—"

he began, and the turtle sneered again, and

"'By the way,' now that's putting on airs, isn't it. By the way, that mountain isn't snow falling at all. That's a mountain of pearls."

"Pearls?"

said Urashima, astonished, "No, that must be a lie. Even piling up a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand pearls wouldn't make a mountain as high as that."

"A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand — what a stingy way to reckon things. In the Dragon Palace we don't count pearls one by one, two by two, in such petty fashion. We do it by the heap — one heap, two heaps. They say one heap comes to about thirty billion pearls, though nobody has ever actually counted them one by one. Pile up about a million heaps of that, and, roughly speaking, you get a peak about that size. We're quite at a loss what to do with all the pearls, honestly. When you get right down to it, they're nothing but fish droppings, after all."

And so, after all that, they arrived at the main gate of the Dragon Palace.

It was surprisingly small.

It stood there, giving off a faint phosphorescent glow, small and unassuming at the foot of the pearl mountain.

Urashima climbed down off the turtle's shell, and, guided by the turtle, stooped a little and passed through the main gate.

All around was a faint dimness.

And it was utterly, hushedly still.

"How quiet it is. Almost frightening. This isn't hell, is it?"

"Do pull yourself together, young master."

said the turtle, giving Urashima a slap on the back with one flipper, "every royal palace is quiet like this. Weren't you off somewhere imagining, in that stale old fantasy of yours, that the Dragon Palace was some kind of ruckus going on year round, like the big fishing-catch dance on the Tango shore? What a pitiful notion. Isn't simplicity and hushed depth supposed to be the very height of refined taste for you people? Calling it hell, honestly. Once you get used to it, this dimness has a softness to it that puts the heart at ease like nothing else. Do mind your footing. It would look shabby if you slipped and fell. Why, you're still wearing your sandals. Take them off, how rude of you."

Urashima reddened and took off his sandals.

Walking barefoot, the soles of his feet felt strangely slick and slippery.

"What sort of path is this. It feels unpleasant."

"It isn't a path. This is a corridor. You're already inside the Dragon Palace, you know."

"Is that so."

he said, looking around him in surprise, but there was no wall, no pillar, nothing at all.

Only a dim, murky dusk stirred, softly and endlessly, all about him.

"In the Dragon Palace it never rains, and it never snows either."

the turtle explained, in a strangely tender, coddling tone.

"So there's no need to build the sort of cramped roofs and walls you have in your houses on land."

"But the gate had a roof, didn't it."

"That's only a marker. It isn't only the gate — the princess's chamber has a roof and walls too. But those, again, are built to preserve the princess's dignity, not to keep off rain and dew."

"Is that how it is."

said Urashima, still looking rather puzzled, "and where, then, is this chamber of the princess? Looking around, it's nothing but a hushed, desolate waste, as though this were the road to the underworld itself — there isn't a single tree or blade of grass to be seen anywhere."

"Country folk really are a trial. Show them some enormous building or some gaudy, overdone decoration and their jaws drop in astonishment, but a beauty like this hushed depth means nothing at all to them. Urashima-san, that refined taste of yours can't be relied on either, it seems. Though I suppose it's only natural, coming from some man of taste out of the rough shores of Tango. That cultivated tradition of yours makes my blood run cold just hearing about it. And to think you called yourself a man of true and proper refinement. Now that you're actually here to see it firsthand, you're nothing but a country bumpkin through and through, and it's enough to make one despair. Well, you'd best give up playing at refined taste by aping other people from now on, I'd say."

Once they had reached the Dragon Palace, the turtle's venomous tongue seemed to grow, if anything, a full degree sharper still.

Urashima, utterly at a loss, said,

"But I can't see a single thing."

in a voice that was very nearly a sob.

"That's exactly why I told you to mind your footing, isn't it. This corridor isn't just any ordinary corridor. It's a bridge of fish. Take a good look. Hundreds of millions of fish, packed shoulder to shoulder without a gap, lying so still they form a kind of floor for this corridor."

Urashima flinched and drew up onto his toes.

So that was why the soles of his feet had felt so slick and slippery all along.

Looking down, sure enough, countless fish, large and small, lay packed side by side without a gap, perfectly motionless, perfectly still.

"This is dreadful."

said Urashima, his pace turning suddenly timid and fearful, "what appalling taste. Is this what you call the beauty of hushed depth? Walking about trampling on fishes' backs — that's the very height of barbarism, isn't it. And above all, it's cruel to these poor fish. This sort of peculiar refinement is quite beyond a country bumpkin like me, I'm afraid."

and with that he vented, at last, a little of the resentment he'd been nursing over being called a country bumpkin, and felt somewhat better for it.

"No, that isn't it at all,"

came, just then, a thin voice from underfoot, "we gather here every day simply to listen, enraptured, to the sound of the princess's koto. This bridge of fish was not made for the sake of any refined taste. Please, pay us no mind and go right on across."

"I see."

said Urashima, with a private, wry laugh, "and here I took it for another piece of the Dragon Palace's décor."

"It may well be more than that, though."

the turtle put in at once, "perhaps this very bridge was arranged by the princess herself, ordering the fish specially, to welcome young master Urashima—"

"Now, now, stop that,"

said Urashima, flustered and blushing, "I'm surely not so conceited as all that. But really, you told me this was some sort of substitute for a corridor floor, spoken so carelessly, that I naturally assumed the fish must be in pain from being trodden on."

"In the world of fish there's no such need for a floor at all. I only explained it that way because, if you were to compare it to a house on land, it would come to about the same thing as a corridor floor — I certainly wasn't speaking carelessly. Why, do you suppose the fish feel any pain at all? At the bottom of the sea even your own body weighs no more than a single sheet of paper. Doesn't it feel, somehow, as though your own body were floating, light as air?"

Now that it had been put to him that way, he did feel, not entirely without reason, a certain floating lightness.

Urashima felt, once again, as though he were being needlessly mocked by the turtle, and it irritated him no end.

"I've quite lost the will to believe anything at all anymore. This is exactly why I dislike this business called adventure. Even if you're being deceived, there's no way at all to see through it. All you can do is simply follow whatever your guide tells you. Once you're told, this is how it is, that's the end of the matter. Adventure truly does nothing but deceive a man. And listen — I can't hear the sound of any koto at all, not the faintest bit."

and at last his argument turned to sheer petulant grumbling.

The turtle, quite unruffled, said,

"The trouble with you is that you've lived your whole life on the flat plane of the land, so you go on assuming a direction must lie in one of the four points, north, south, east, or west. But in the sea there are two more directions besides. Namely, up and down. All this while you've been looking for the princess's chamber only ahead of you. That, right there, is your grave mistake. Why don't you look up over your head? Why don't you look down at your feet? The world of the sea is a world adrift, afloat. That main gate just now, and that mountain of pearls too, are both, even now, floating and shifting about, however slightly. It's only because you yourself are being rocked up and down, left and right, that you fail to notice the other things moving. You may well imagine you've come a long way forward by now, but really, we're at about the same spot as before. If anything, we may even have drifted backward. Just now, on account of the current, we're being carried steadily backward. And meanwhile, compared to a moment ago, we've all floated upward together some hundred fathoms or so. Well, in any case, let's cross a little further along this bridge of fish. See there, the fish are growing sparser now, aren't they. Do mind you don't miss your footing. Not that there's any danger of plunging straight down even if you do miss it, mind you, seeing as you too weigh no more than a sheet of paper. In other words, this bridge leads nowhere. Cross this corridor and there's nothing at all ahead of you. But look beneath your feet, that's the thing. Now then, you fish, move aside a little, the young master is going to see the princess. These fellows here, in effect, form the canopy over the inner keep of the Dragon Palace. 'A canopy adrift like jellyfish' — would a phrase like that please you men of refined taste, I wonder."

The fish silently, quietly parted to left and right.

Faintly, from beneath his feet, came the sound of a koto.

It closely resembled the sound of a Japanese koto, and yet it was not so forceful as that, but softer, more fleeting, with a strangely lingering, trailing echo to it.

Dew on the chrysanthemum.

A thin robe.

The evening sky.

The fulling block.

Birds asleep afloat on the water.

The pheasant's cry.

It was none of these.

Even to Urashima, man of refined taste as he was, it was something whose meaning he could not quite place, a fragile, uncertain thing, and yet beneath it ran a noble, desolate loneliness of a kind never to be heard on land.

"What a strange piece of music. What is it called?"

The turtle too listened for a moment, straining its ears, and

"'The Noble Truth.'"

was all the answer it gave.

"Sei-tei?"

"The 'sei' of 'sacred,' and the 'tei' of 'resignation.'"

"Ah, I see, seitai — the Noble Truth."

murmured Urashima, and for the first time he grasped something in the life of this Dragon Palace at the sea bottom that stood a whole order above their own notions of taste — something truly sublime.

His own refinement, it seemed, really could not be relied on at all.

It was no wonder the turtle broke out in a cold sweat, listening to him go on about cultivated tradition and true, proper refinement.

His own refined taste was nothing but aping other people.

Nothing but a country mountain monkey, no doubt about it.

"From now on I'll believe whatever you tell me. The Noble Truth. So that's how it is."

Urashima stood there, quite stunned, still straining his ears toward that strange and wondrous piece.

"Now then, we'll jump down from here. There's no danger in it at all. Spread both your arms out like this, take one step forward, and you'll drift gently downward, quite pleasantly. Go straight down from where this bridge of fish ends and you land right at the foot of the great staircase of the main hall of the Dragon Palace. Now then, what are you standing about in a daze for. We're jumping down. Ready?"

The turtle drifted gently downward.

Urashima too collected himself, spread both arms wide, took one step out beyond the bridge of fish, and felt himself drawn smoothly, pleasantly downward, a cool breeze seeming to brush his cheeks, and before long the surroundings took on the hue of a green, shaded grove, and just as the sound of the koto grew nearer and nearer, he found himself standing, side by side with the turtle, at the foot of the great staircase of the main hall.

A staircase, though one could hardly make out one step distinct from the next — it was more like a gently sloping hillside, paved over with tiny, dully gleaming gray beads.

"Are these pearls too?"

asked Urashima, in a low voice.

The turtle looked at Urashima's face with a pitying sort of eye, and

"See a bead and it's a pearl, is it. Pearls are the very things thrown away to make that towering mountain we saw, aren't they. Well, go on, scoop up a handful of those beads and see for yourself."

Urashima did as he was told and scooped up the beads with both hands, and found them icy cold.

"Why, it's hail!"

"Don't be absurd. While you're at it, pop some in your mouth and see."

Urashima obediently popped five or six of the ice-cold beads into his mouth.

"Delicious."

"Isn't it though? These are cherries of the sea. Eat them and you won't grow old for three hundred years."

"Is that so — and it's all the same no matter how many you eat?"

and Urashima, man of refined taste that he was, quite forgot his manners for a moment and showed every sign of scooping up another handful to eat.

"I have a great horror of growing old and ugly, you know. Dying itself doesn't frighten me so much, but the ugliness of old age is simply not to my taste at all. Perhaps I ought to eat a few more."

"She's laughing at you, you know. Look up there. The princess has come out to greet you. My, isn't she looking especially lovely today."

There, where the slope of sea-cherries came to an end, stood a small, slender woman draped in thin blue robes, smiling faintly.

Through the thin cloth her skin showed pure white.

Urashima hastily looked away, and

"Is that the princess?"

he whispered to the turtle.

Urashima's face had gone quite red.

"Well, who else would it be. What are you flustering about for. Now then, go on and greet her properly."

Urashima grew more flustered still, and

"But whatever should I say? What good would it do a man like me to announce himself, and really, this whole visit of ours is so terribly abrupt. It doesn't make any sense. Let's go home."

and Urashima, for all his supposedly noble destiny, turned quite servile before the princess and began, in earnest, preparing to flee.

"The princess has known all about you for the longest time already. Isn't there a saying, 'ten thousand leagues are as nothing before the palace steps'? Just resign yourself to it and make a polite bow, that's all there is to it. And even supposing the princess knew nothing at all about you, she isn't the sort to know anything so petty as caution or suspicion in the first place, so there's no need to fuss over it. Just say you've come to pay a visit and enjoy yourself."

"Now, that would never do, how rude. Ah, she's laughing. Well, in any case, let's bow."

Urashima made so deep and reverent a bow that his hands very nearly touched the tips of his own toes.

The turtle, quite alarmed, said,

"That's far too polite. It's embarrassing to watch. Aren't I the one who saved your life? Show a bit more dignity, won't you. Bowing and scraping like that, so much for refined taste, I must say. Come now, the princess has invited you, let's go. Walk with your chest out, like a man who thinks himself the handsomest fellow in all Japan and the very finest man of taste besides. You're haughty enough with the likes of us, but you haven't a scrap of nerve with women, it seems."

"No, no, one must show proper respect to a person of such noble standing."

His voice had gone hoarse with sheer tension, his legs tangled beneath him, and he tottered his way, staggering unsteadily, up the staircase, and looking about he found himself in what could only be called a hall vast enough to hold ten thousand tatami mats.

No, perhaps it would be more fitting to call it a garden than a hall.

Bathed in a shadowy green light coming from who knew where, hazy and dim, that vast expanse fit for ten thousand mats was paved, just as before, with tiny hail-like beads, with black rocks scattered here and there in no particular order, and that was all there was to it.

There was no roof, of course, nor so much as a single pillar — as far as the eye could see it was a vast, desolate expanse one might well have called a ruin.

Looking more carefully, though, he could see small purple flowers peeking out here and there from among the gaps in the tiny beads, which only added to the loneliness of the place, and he thought, perhaps this is what they call the very extreme of hushed depth, and yet how in the world can anyone live in such a forlorn, uncertain place — something like an admiring sigh escaped him, and, thinking better of it once more, he stole another glance at the princess's face.

The princess, saying nothing, turned neatly about and began walking slowly on.

Only then did he notice: behind the princess a countless swarm of tiny golden fish, smaller even than killifish, shimmered and swam in a mass, moving exactly as she moved when she walked, so that it looked for all the world as though a rain of gold were ceaselessly falling all around her, and he felt, unmistakably, a noble presence not of this world.

The princess walked barefoot, her thin robes trailing behind her, but looking closely, her small, pale feet never actually touched the tiny beads underfoot.

There remained the faintest sliver of a gap between the soles of her feet and the beads.

Perhaps those soles had never once in their existence touched anything at all.

They must be as soft and lovely, he thought, as the soles of a newborn infant's feet, and with that thought the princess's body, unadorned by any conspicuous ornament whatsoever, seemed to him all the more possessed of a true, unassuming nobility.

He began, little by little, to feel grateful that he had come on this adventure after all, glad that he had come to the Dragon Palace, and as he walked along after the princess in a kind of rapture,

"Well now, not bad, is it."

the turtle whispered low into Urashima's ear, giving his side a little tickling poke with one flipper.

"Oh — what,"

said Urashima, flustered, "these flowers, these purple ones, they're lovely, aren't they."

he said, changing the subject entirely.

"These?"

said the turtle, sounding rather unimpressed, "these are the blossoms of the sea-cherry. They're a bit like violets, aren't they. Eat one of these petals and you get pleasantly drunk. That's the Dragon Palace's sake, that is. And that thing over there that looks like a rock, that's seaweed. It's been sitting there so many tens of thousands of years that it's hardened up into something like a rock, but really it's softer than yokan bean jelly. Tastier than any feast you'd find on land, I promise you. Each rock has its own different flavor too. In the Dragon Palace we live on this seaweed, get drunk on the petals, suck on sea-cherries when we're thirsty, listen entranced to the princess's koto, and watch the little fish dance about like a living flurry of falling blossoms. Well, how is it? Didn't I tell you, when I first invited you, that the Dragon Palace was a country of song and dance, fine food and drink? So, was it different from what you imagined?"

Urashima made no answer, only gave a deep, wry laugh.

"I know just what you imagined, all right. Some great clanging, banging racket, huge platters piled with sliced sea bream and sliced tuna, girls in red robes doing a hand-dance, and gold and silver and coral and brocade scattered about every which way—"

"Nonsense,"

said Urashima, looking, for once, genuinely displeased, "I am not so vulgar a man as all that. But I confess there were times I thought of myself as a solitary man, and now that I have come here and met a truly solitary lady, I find myself thoroughly ashamed of the affected life I have led up until now."

"You mean her?"

said the turtle, in a low voice, jerking his chin rudely toward the princess, "she isn't solitary in the least. Not a bit troubled by it. It's only people with ambitions who go fretting themselves over solitude — if you simply don't concern yourself in the slightest with the affairs of the outer world, you can live a hundred years, a thousand years, all alone, and think nothing of it. That is, for someone who isn't bothered by that criticizing business we spoke of. By the way, where exactly do you think you're going?"

"Why, nowhere in particular, I suppose,"

said Urashima, taken aback by the unexpected question, "but you see, that lady there, she's—"

"The princess isn't leading you off anywhere in particular, you know. She's already forgotten all about you, I should think. She's simply on her way back to her own chamber now. Do pull yourself together. This is the Dragon Palace, right here, this very place. There's nowhere else in particular I could show you. Well, just amuse yourself here however you like. Isn't this enough for you?"

"Don't tease me so. Whatever am I supposed to do?"

said Urashima, nearly in tears, "but she came out to greet me herself, and it isn't that I was being conceited about it, but I thought it only proper manners to follow along after her. I certainly wasn't thinking anything I ought to be ashamed of. And here you go talking as if I had some horrid ulterior motive. You really are spiteful, you know. It's too cruel. I've never in my life felt so thoroughly humiliated. This is really too much."

"Now don't take it so hard. The princess is a placid, easygoing sort. Well, you're a rare guest come all this way from the land, after all, and besides, you're the one who saved my life, so of course she'd come out to greet you. What's more, you've got a clean, straightforward way about you, and you're not bad-looking either, come to think of it. No, no, I'm only joking, I don't want you getting conceited over that now. In any case, isn't it simply that the princess comes out to the steps to greet the rare guest who's come to her home, and once she's satisfied of that, she withdraws to her own chamber, pretending not to notice, leaving you free to amuse yourself here for as many days as you please, just as your own fancy takes you? To tell the truth, even we don't understand very well what goes on in the princess's mind. She's such a placid, easygoing sort, after all."

"No, now that you put it that way, I begin to feel I understand a little. Your guess doesn't seem far wrong, on the whole. In other words, this may well be the true manner of hospitality among people of real nobility. To welcome a guest, and then forget him. And yet to have fine wine and rare delicacies laid out, quite without any fuss, all around the guest the whole while. The music and dance too are performed with no blatant intention of entertaining the guest at all. The princess plays her koto with no thought of anyone listening. The fish dance about freely, joyfully, with no thought of showing off to anyone. She does not count on the guest's praise. Nor does the guest need to make any special show of admiration for her benefit. He may lie down and pay no attention at all, and it would make no difference. The host has already forgotten all about the guest. And yet the guest has been granted full license to behave exactly as he pleases. Eat if he likes, and go without if he doesn't feel like it. He may listen to the koto half-drunk and half-dreaming, and it would still be no discourtesy at all. Ah, this is surely how one ought to receive a guest, in every respect. I wish I could show this generous, magnanimous hospitality of the Dragon Palace to all those petty, clever, thoroughgoing fools who go on and on urging some dreadful dish on their guests, trading empty flatteries back and forth, laughing their affected little laughs at things that aren't the least bit funny, gasping in exaggerated astonishment at some perfectly unremarkable piece of gossip, carrying on their whole hollow, false-from-top-to-bottom social performance, all the while congratulating themselves on how splendidly they're treating their so-called high-class guest. All they care about is whether they might be lowering their own standing, fretting over it, holding the guest at arm's length with all their strange suspicion, running themselves ragged for nothing, without a scrap of true sincerity to their name. What a business. As if pouring a single cup of sake required an exchange of receipts, I gave you a drink, sir, I have received it, sir — it's insufferable."

"That's it, that's the spirit."

said the turtle, delighted, "but let's not get you so worked up that you bring on a heart attack. Here, sit yourself down on this rock of seaweed and have some of the sea-cherry wine. The sea-cherry petals alone might be a bit too strong-smelling for a first-timer, so put five or six sea-cherries on your tongue along with them, and they'll dissolve with a little fizz into a pleasantly refreshing wine. Depending on how you mix them, the flavor changes any number of ways, so go on and work out a blend to your own liking and drink up."

Just then, Urashima rather wanted a somewhat stronger drink.

Three petals, together with two sea-cherries, set on the tip of the tongue, and at once his whole mouth filled with fine wine — even just to hold it there was enough to send him into a kind of rapture.

It went down tickling his throat pleasantly, and left him with the happy feeling that a small light had just been lit somewhere inside his body.

"This is fine stuff. A very broom of jade for sweeping away one's sorrows, truly."

"Sorrows?"

the turtle caught him up on it at once, "have you got something weighing on you?"

"No, nothing in particular, ha ha,"

he laughed, a forced laugh to cover his embarrassment, and then let out a small, soft sigh, and stole a glance at the princess's retreating figure.

The princess walked on alone, saying nothing.

Bathed in that pale-green light, she looked almost like some fragrant, translucent seaweed, swaying gently to and fro as she walked, all by herself.

"Where can she be going."

he murmured, half to himself.

"To her chamber, I should think."

answered the turtle, quite composed, with a look that said this was the most obvious thing in the world.

"You keep saying her chamber, her chamber, but where on earth is this chamber of hers? There's nothing to be seen anywhere at all, is there."

As far as the eye could see there was only that flat, dully glowing expanse, wide enough to be called a wilderness, and nowhere any trace of anything resembling a palace.

"Off in that direction, far off where the princess is walking — don't you see something, way off there?"

said the turtle, and Urashima, knitting his brow, stared hard in that direction, and

"Ah, now that you mention it, there does seem to be something there."

Off in the distance, what seemed nearly a mile away, in a place hazy and wavering like the bottom of some deep, dim pool, something small and pure white, like a flower blooming underwater, could be seen.

"That's it? It's rather small, isn't it."

"Well, the princess only needs it for sleeping alone in, doesn't she — what use would she have for some enormous palace?"

"Now that you put it that way, I suppose you're right,"

said Urashima, mixing himself another cup of sea-cherry wine and drinking it down, "is she, I wonder, always so quiet like that?"

"Yes, always. Words, don't you think, sprout up out of the anxiety of simply being alive? Just as a red poison mushroom grows up out of rotted earth, isn't it the anxiety of life that ferments words into being? There are words of joy too, of course, but even those, don't you find, have some unpleasant contrivance worked into them? Perhaps human beings feel anxious even in the midst of their joy. All human words are contrivances. Affectations. Where there is no anxiety, surely there is no need at all for such unpleasant contrivance. I have never once heard the princess say a word. And yet she never does that thing so common among quiet people either, does she — what do you call it, sunshine on the surface and autumn frost underneath — carrying on some secretly biting judgment of others in her heart. She isn't thinking about anything at all. She only smiles that faint smile of hers and plucks at her koto, or wanders idly about this hall, or puts a sea-cherry petal in her mouth for the taste of it. It's a truly easy, untroubled life she leads."

"Is that so. Does she drink this sea-cherry wine too, I wonder. Really, this is wonderful stuff. With this alone, a man would need nothing else. Might I have a bit more?"

"Yes, of course, go right ahead. It's foolish to hold back once you've come here. You're permitted anything, without limit. While you're at it, why not try eating something too? Every one of those rocks you see is a rare delicacy. Would you prefer something rich and oily? Or something light, with a bit of tartness to it? Whatever flavor you like, it's there."

"Ah, I can hear the koto. I suppose it's all right if I lie down and listen?"

This notion of being permitted anything, without limit, was, in truth, something entirely new to him in all his life.

Urashima, forgetting every last scrap of refined deportment, stretched himself out flat on his back, "ah, ah, how good it feels to lie sprawled out drunk like this. Let me try eating something too, while I'm at it. Is there any seaweed that tastes like roast pheasant?"

"There is."

"And what about one that tastes like mulberries?"

"I daresay there's one of those too. You do have oddly coarse tastes, though."

"My true nature comes out, that's all. I'm a country bumpkin, through and through."

his very manner of speech had somehow shifted by now, "and they call this the very height of refined taste, don't they, ha."

Lifting his eyes, he saw, far overhead, the canopy of fish drifting there, peaceful and unhurried, a hazy blue in the distance.

And then, all at once, a great swarm broke away from that canopy and scattered in a rush, each fish flashing its silver scales, dancing and playing across the whole vault of the sky like a wild flurry of falling snow.

In the Dragon Palace there was neither night nor day.

It was always as fresh and clear as a morning in May, filled always with that same shadowy green light, and Urashima had no idea at all how many days he had already spent there.

All that while, Urashima was, in the truest sense, permitted anything, without limit.

Urashima even went into the princess's chamber.

The princess showed not the slightest sign of aversion.

She only went on smiling that faint smile of hers.

And, before long, Urashima grew weary of it all.

Perhaps he had simply grown weary of being permitted anything.

He found himself longing for the impoverished life on land.

The people up on land, fretting over one another's criticism, weeping and raging, scraping by in their petty, furtive little lives — he found them unbearably dear now, and even, somehow, beautiful.

Urashima turned to the princess and said, farewell.

This abrupt announcement of his departure too was granted, without a word, by that same silent smile.

In short, everything, absolutely everything, was permitted.

From beginning to end, he was permitted anything.

The princess came out to see him off as far as the great staircase of the Dragon Palace, and, wordlessly, held out a small shell.

It was a tightly closed bivalve, giving off a dazzling five-colored light.

This was that famous parting gift of the Dragon Palace, the tamatebako.

The way there is easy, easy — the way back is hard.

Once more astride the turtle's back, Urashima drifted away from the Dragon Palace in a daze.

A strange melancholy welled up in Urashima's breast.

Ah, he had forgotten to thank her.

There was no other place like that anywhere.

Ah, he ought to have stayed there forever.

But he was a creature of the land, after all.

However easy and comfortable a life he might lead, his own house, his own home village, clung to some corner of his mind and would not let go.

Even drunk on fine wine and fast asleep, his dreams were always dreams of home.

It was enough to make a man despair.

He had never had the qualifications to enjoy a place as fine as that.

"Ahh, this is no good at all. I'm lonesome."

Urashima cried out, in a loud voice that sounded almost like despair.

"I can't say why exactly, but this is no good. Hey, turtle. Say something, won't you, give me one of your lively insults again. You haven't said a single word this whole time."

The turtle had been paddling on in perfect silence all this while.

"Are you angry with me? Angry that I'm leaving the Dragon Palace practically like some fellow skipping out on the bill?"

"Don't go feeling sorry for yourself. That's exactly what's so tiresome about you land folk. Go home if you feel like going home. Haven't I told you, over and over, from the very start, do just as you please?"

"But you seem so out of spirits, somehow."

"Look who's talking, you're the one looking oddly downcast yourself. As for me, well, greeting people is one thing, but seeing them off, that's never been my strong suit."

"The way there is easy, easy, is it."

"This is no time for jokes. Seeing someone off just doesn't put a body in good spirits, somehow. Nothing but sighs, and whatever you say sounds hollow, and honestly I'd sooner just say goodbye right here and be done with it."

"So you're lonesome too, after all."

said Urashima, quite moved, "you've really looked after me a great deal, this time. Thank you."

The turtle made no answer, only gave its shell a little shake, as if to say, oh, that's nothing, and simply went on paddling busily along.

"That lady, I suppose she'll go on amusing herself there, all alone, just as before."

Urashima let out a truly forlorn sigh, "she gave me this beautiful shell, but surely it isn't something to eat, is it."

The turtle began to snicker,

"Just spending a short while in the Dragon Palace and you've gone and gotten a terrible appetite, haven't you. That thing there doesn't seem to be for eating, at any rate. I don't quite know myself, but isn't there something inside that shell?"

and here the turtle, quite abruptly, let drop some odd remark calculated, like that serpent in the Garden of Eden, to stir a man's curiosity.

Was this too, one wonders, simply the shared destiny of reptiles everywhere?

No, no, it would be unkind to this good-natured turtle to settle on that conclusion so readily.

The turtle himself had, after all, once boldly declared to Urashima, "But I'm no serpent out of the Garden of Eden — begging your pardon, I'm a plain Japanese turtle."

so he had proudly said.

It would be a shame not to believe him.

And judging, too, from the turtle's whole manner toward Urashima up to this point, he seems by no means the sort of crafty, cunning creature, like that serpent of Eden, who whispers terrible temptations of ruin.

On the contrary, he seems nothing more than that endearing sort of chatterbox, streaming on and on like a carp banner in the wind, as mentioned earlier.

That is to say, there was no malice in him at all.

That, at least, is how I should like to interpret it.

The turtle went on, "but still, perhaps it's best you don't open that shell and look inside. Surely something like the very essence of the Dragon Palace is sealed up inside it. Open it up there on land, and who knows, some strange mirage might come rising up out of it and drive you mad, or perhaps the sea's own tide might come gushing out and bring on a great flood, and in any case, letting the oxygen of the sea bottom loose into the air on land, I have a feeling that nothing good would come of it."

he said, quite in earnest.

Urashima believed in the turtle's kindness.

"Perhaps you're right. If that noble atmosphere of the Dragon Palace really is sealed away inside this shell, then exposed to the vulgar air of the land it might well lose its bearings and set off some tremendous explosion. Well then, I'll simply keep it always, carefully, as a treasure of our household."

By now they had already risen to the surface of the sea.

The sunlight was dazzling.

He could see the shore of his home.

Urashima now wanted nothing more than to rush home this very instant, gather his father and mother, his brother and sister, and all his many servants, and tell them, in every detail, all about the Dragon Palace — that adventure is the power to believe, that the refined taste of this world is nothing but a petty, monkey-see-monkey-do imitation, that what people call orthodoxy is only another name for vulgarity, do you see, that true refinement is nothing less than the state of the Noble Truth, no mere resignation at all, do you see, that there is no such tiresome thing as criticism there, that one is permitted anything, without limit, and that there is only, always, a smile, do you see, that the host forgets all about the guest, you wouldn't understand it, and so on, flinging about this brand-new knowledge he had, so to speak, only just now come by, in the wildest disorder — and he grew quite fired up thinking that if that realist of a brother of his showed even the slightest look of doubt, he would thrust this beautiful

souvenir of the Dragon Palace right under his nose and shut him up completely — and, forgetting even to bid the turtle farewell, he leapt down onto the beach and hurried, all in a fluster, toward his family home, only to find—

What ever could have happened, to the old village

What ever could have happened, to the old house

As far as the eye can see, only a wild waste

No shape of anyone, no road at all

Only the sound of the wind blowing through the pines

— that is the turn events took.

After much agonizing indecision, Urashima at last came to open that souvenir shell from the Dragon Palace — but it hardly seems the turtle ought to bear any blame for this.

"You must not open it"

— and the very telling not to only makes a person all the more tempted to go and look inside anyway: this weakness of human nature appears not only in this tale of Urashima, but the very same psychology seems to be at work in the Greek myth of Pandora's box as well.

But in the case of Pandora's box, the gods' revenge had been schemed out from the very start.

The single phrase, "you must not open it,"

was meant, from the beginning, to inflame Pandora's curiosity, and the prohibition, "do not open it,"

was pronounced with the spiteful expectation that Pandora would, without fail, sooner or later, go and open that box after all.

Our good-natured turtle, by contrast, said what he said to Urashima out of purest kindness.

Judging from the turtle's guileless, unthinking way of saying it at the time, I think we may safely believe as much.

That turtle is an honest fellow.

That turtle bears no blame at all.

That much I can testify to with full confidence — but now there remains one more strange point here that I cannot quite make sense of.

When Urashima opens that souvenir from the Dragon Palace, a white smoke comes rising up out of it, and in an instant he turns into an old man of some three hundred years, and the story ends there, with some remark like, if only he hadn't opened it, what a wretched turn of events, how pitiful — this is how it goes in the commonly told "Urashima-san"

tale, but I myself have fallen into deep doubt about this.

Could it be, then, that this souvenir from the Dragon Palace was, like Pandora's box brimming with every seed of human calamity, a gift concealing the princess's own grave revenge, or some intent of punishment?

Even while showing every sign of saying nothing, only smiling, permitting everything without limit, had she secretly harbored, underneath, a merciless severity of judgment, granting Urashima no forgiveness at all for his selfishness, and handed him that shell meaning to impose a harsh punishment upon him?

No — one need not go so far as such an extreme, pessimistic theory; perhaps it is simply that people of noble birth are often quite capable of cruel mockery without giving it a second thought, and the princess, too, may have carried out this ill-natured joke with nothing more than an entirely innocent sense of mischief.

Either way, that the princess, supposedly the very picture of true refinement, should have handed him so troublesome a souvenir remains a thing utterly beyond comprehension.

Inside Pandora's box, they say, were sealed every manner of ill-omened demon — sickness, terror, resentment, sorrow, suspicion, jealousy, wrath, hatred, curses, anxiety, regret, servility, greed, falsehood, idleness, violence — and the instant Pandora quietly opened that box, they all burst forth at once, like a great swarm of winged ants, and spread themselves without exception into every last corner of this world; and yet, is it not also told that when Pandora, stunned, hung her head and gazed down into the emptiness at the bottom of that box, she found there, shining like a single star in the darkness, one small jewel?

And upon that jewel, they say, was inscribed the word "Hope"

— so the story goes.

And they say that, at this, a faint touch of color rose even into Pandora's pale cheeks.

And ever since that day, however many demons of suffering may assail them, human beings have been able, by the power of that "Hope,"

to find courage, and to endure whatever hardship comes.

Set beside that, this souvenir from the Dragon Palace has not one scrap of charm to it.

Nothing but smoke.

And in an instant, an old man of three hundred years.

Even supposing that star of "Hope"

had somehow remained at the bottom of that shell, Urashima-san is already three hundred years old by then.

Handing "Hope"

to an old man of three hundred years is very much like a cruel joke.

It's simply unreasonable, on the face of it.

Well then, suppose we try handing him, instead, that same "Noble Truth"

we spoke of earlier — how would that do?

But the man in question is three hundred years old.

There's hardly any need, at this late date, to hand a man such an affected, pretentious thing as that — once a man reaches three hundred years of age, he's already resigned himself to more or less everything, surely.

In the end, nothing at all seems to answer.

There is simply no hand of salvation to be extended here.

What a dreadful souvenir to have brought home, however one looks at it.

And yet, if I throw up my hands and give up here, foreigners may well go about saying that Japanese fairy tales are crueler even than Greek myth.

and that would be a truly mortifying thing.

a truly mortifying thing indeed.

And besides, for the honor of that dear, beloved Dragon Palace, I should very much like, somehow, to discover some noble significance in this incomprehensible souvenir.

However true it may be that a few days in the Dragon Palace amount to several hundred years on land, there seems no particular need for those years to have been handed to Urashima in the form of so troublesome a parting gift.

If Urashima had simply turned, the very instant he rose up out of the sea from the Dragon Palace, into a white-haired man of three hundred years, the story would still make some sense.

And if the princess had meant, out of kindness, to keep Urashima forever young, then there would have been no need at all to go out of her way to hand him so dangerous a thing, marked "you must not open it,"

and send him off with it.

Could she not simply have thrown it away in some corner of the Dragon Palace instead?

Or does it mean, perhaps, something like: whatever filth you yourself have deposited, you may as well carry it home yourself?

That would make it into a rather low sort of "spiteful dig"

if you ask me.

Surely it can't be imagined that the princess of the Noble Truth would scheme up something so petty as a squabble between some tenement husband and wife.

I simply cannot make sense of it.

I pondered over this for a very long while.

And it is only now, of late, that I feel I have at last begun to understand it, a little.

That is to say, we have all along been misled by the preconception that Urashima's three hundred years were, for Urashima himself, a misfortune.

Even the picture books, once Urashima becomes three hundred years old, never go on to say anything like, "how truly wretched his lot has become. What a pitiful thing."

Nothing of the sort is written there.

In an instant, a white-haired old man

— and that is the end of it.

Pitiful, foolish — such judgments are nothing but the arbitrary, presumptuous verdicts of us common, worldly folk.

Becoming three hundred years old was, for Urashima, by no means a misfortune.

The notion that at the bottom of the shell lay a star of "Hope,"

and that this alone saved him — thinking it over, that strikes me as rather a girlish sort of fancy, with a whiff of the contrived about it; no, Urashima was saved by that very smoke rising up, by that alone.

It makes no difference at all if nothing whatsoever remained at the bottom of that shell.

That is simply not the point.

For it is thus:

The years and months are a human being's salvation.

Forgetting is a human being's salvation.

The noble hospitality of the Dragon Palace, one feels, reaches its very highest point precisely in this wonderful parting gift.

Is it not said that memories grow more beautiful the further off they recede?

And what is more, the coming of those three hundred years was left, in the end, entirely to Urashima's own state of mind.

Even here, at the very last, Urashima had been granted the princess's boundless permission.

Had he not been lonely, Urashima would never have gone and opened that shell to look inside.

Only when, at his wits' end, he sought his salvation in that one shell alone, might he open it.

Open it, and at once come three hundred years, and forgetting.

Let me say no more on this than that.

Such is the deep mercy to be found in the fairy tales of Japan.

And Urashima, they say, lived on ten years more after that, a happy old man.

Kachikachi Yama

In the story of Kachikachi Yama, the rabbit is a young girl, and that tanuki who suffers such a wretched defeat is an ugly man in love with her.

This strikes me as a fact so solid there's really no room left to doubt it.

The incident is said to have taken place in Koshu, on the shore of Kawaguchi, one of the Fuji Five Lakes, somewhere on the hill behind what is now Funatsu.

The people of Koshu have a rough sort of temperament.

Perhaps that's why this tale, compared with other fairy tales, comes out rather roughly made itself.

To begin with, the very opening of the story is cruel.

That business of the old-woman soup is appalling.

It isn't even the least bit droll or clever.

The tanuki, for his part, played a thoroughly wretched trick.

And when you get to the part where the old woman's bones lay scattered under the floorboards, it becomes utterly grim, and one is sorry to say that as so-called children's reading matter it could hardly avoid being banned outright.

The picture books of Kachikachi Yama currently in print, accordingly, seem to have shrewdly glossed the matter over, having the tanuki merely injure the old woman and flee.

That does avoid a ban, and is on the whole a fine thing, but even so, as a punishment for so slight a piece of mischief, the rabbit's reprisal does seem excessively persistent.

It is no dashing revenge, felling the foe with a single stroke.

He is left half-dead, tormented and tormented again, and in the end drowned, bubbling under, in a boat of mud.

The method, start to finish, is nothing but trickery.

This is not the way of Japanese bushido.

Now, if the tanuki had really committed that vicious deception known as the old-woman soup, then I could see well enough that receiving such persistent tormenting in return might not be unreasonable — but out of consideration for the impression made on childish minds, and for fear of a ban, the tanuki is made to merely injure the old woman and flee, and then to suffer at the rabbit's hands all those humiliations and torments, and finally that most unseemly of drowning deaths — and this does seem, in that light, somewhat excessive.

To begin with, this tanuki, guilty of nothing at all, was idling peacefully in the mountains when the old man caught him, and, arriving at the desperate fate of being turned into tanuki soup, struggled and suffered, trying by any means to cut open some path to life, and as a last resort deceived the old woman, and so won through by the narrowest margin.

Scheming up that old-woman soup was a very wicked thing to do, certainly, but as for merely scratching the old woman and injuring her in the course of his escape, as the picture books nowadays would have it — at that moment the tanuki, too, may well have been struggling in blind, desperate self-defense, thrashing about half out of his senses, and perhaps inflicted the injury on the old woman without even meaning to; it hardly seems, viewed that way, so very hateful a crime.

My own five-year-old daughter, whose looks, unfortunately, take after her father's, has likewise, unfortunately, inherited something of her father's mind, and has an odd streak in her too.

When I read her this picture book of Kachikachi Yama there in the air-raid shelter, she came out with the unexpected remark,

"Poor Mr. Tanuki."

Which took me by surprise.

Though I should say that this child's "poor thing"

has lately become her one stock phrase, trotted out over absolutely anything she happens to see,

and the transparent ulterior motive of winning praise from her doting mother by way of it is so plain to see that there is really nothing to be so very astonished about.

Or perhaps, when her father once took her to the nearby Inokashira Zoo and she watched a little troop of tanuki forever pattering back and forth in their cage, she decided they were lovable creatures, and so, quite regardless of the rights and wrongs of the case, has taken the tanuki's side in this tale of Kachikachi Yama as well.

In any case, the pronouncements of this small sympathizer of our household are not to be relied upon in the least.

The grounds of her thinking are flimsy.

The reasons for her sympathy are hazy.

On the whole, none of it is really worth taking seriously.

And yet, hearing my daughter's thoroughly irresponsible little outburst, I found myself struck by a certain suggestion.

This child, knowing nothing at all, had simply babbled out some word she'd lately picked up, quite at random — and yet, prompted by that very word, her father found himself thinking: indeed, when you look at it this way, the rabbit's treatment does seem a bit too harsh; small children like this one can perhaps be talked around and left none the wiser, but might not an older child, one already instructed in notions of bushido and fighting fair and square, come to feel that this punishment meted out by the rabbit was, as they say, "a dirty way to go about it"?

This is a real problem, thought the foolish father, knitting his brow.

For in the plot as the picture books nowadays have it, the tanuki merely gives the old woman a scratch, and for that alone is so viciously toyed with by the rabbit, his back set afire and red pepper rubbed into the burn, and in the end made to ride out to his death in a boat of mud — any child old enough to be attending national school would surely be struck at once by the unfairness of it, and would surely wonder, moreover, even granting that the tanuki really had attempted that outrageous old-woman soup, why the rabbit did not step forward and declare himself openly, fair and square, and deal him a single righteous blow instead.

That the rabbit was too weak in body for such a thing is, in this case, no excuse at all.

A vendetta ought, by all rights, to be fought fair and square.

Heaven sides with justice.

Even against hopeless odds — divine punishment!

— crying out that one line, and charge straight in from the front.

And if the difference in skill proved too great, then the thing to do would be to endure hardship and bide one's time, retreat into some mountain like Kurama, and devote himself heart and soul to swordsmanship.

That is, after all, more or less what every great man of Japan has done since ancient times.

Whatever the circumstances, a tale of vendetta in which trickery is used, and the enemy tormented to death besides, does not seem to exist anywhere in Japan — except here.

It is only this Kachikachi Yama, somehow, whose manner of taking revenge leaves a poor impression.

It simply isn't manly, is it — and would not anyone, child or adult, so long as they cherish even the least regard for justice, feel some faint displeasure at this?

Rest easy.

I too have given this some thought.

And I have come to understand that it is only natural the rabbit's way of doing things should feel unmanly.

Because this rabbit is not a man at all.

That much is certain.

This rabbit is a sixteen-year-old maiden.

Not the least bit womanly yet, but a beauty all the same.

And of all human beings, it is invariably this particular type of woman who proves the most cruel.

Greek mythology gives us any number of beautiful goddesses, but among them, setting Venus aside, the virgin goddess Artemis is said to be held the most alluring of all.

As you know, Artemis is goddess of the moon, a pale crescent gleaming on her brow, and she is swift and headstrong — in a word, Apollo made over into a woman.

And every fearsome beast of the lower world is her retainer.

And yet her figure is by no means that of some rough, sturdy giantess.

Rather she is small and slender, with delicate, lovely limbs, and a face of an eerie, unsettling beauty — but she lacks any of Venus's "womanliness,"

and her breasts are small.

Toward those who displease her, she is perfectly capable of cruelty.

There was even a man who peeped at her while she bathed, and she thought nothing of dashing water at him and turning him into a stag on the spot.

A mere glimpse of her bathing was enough to provoke such fury.

Take hold of her hand, and there's no telling what dreadful retribution might follow.

Any man who falls for a woman like this is bound to suffer the most miserable and utter humiliation.

And yet it is men — the more dull-witted the man, the more easily so — who fall for this dangerous type of woman.

And the outcome, in nearly every case, is much the same.

Anyone who doubts it need only look at this pitiable tanuki.

The tanuki had, for some time already, been secretly nursing feelings of longing for this Artemis-type rabbit maiden.

Once we settle it that the rabbit was a girl of the Artemis type, then, whichever crime the tanuki was guilty of — the old-woman soup or the mere scratch — one has to admit that his punishment coming out so spitefully mean-spirited, and not remotely "manly,"

was, sigh though one might, only to be expected — there's nothing for it but to nod along.

And what is more, this tanuki, true to type for a man who falls for an Artemis-type girl, was, even among his fellow tanuki, a poor specimen to look at — plump and round, dull-witted, a great glutton, an utterly graceless creature — so that one can well imagine, and more than well imagine, just how wretchedly things were bound to turn out for him.

The tanuki, having been caught by the old man and come within a hair's breadth of being made into tanuki soup, longing all the while for just one more glimpse of that rabbit maiden, struggled with all his might, and at last got away and made it back to the mountain, and wandered about muttering something to himself, hunting here and there for the rabbit, and finding her at last,

"Rejoice with me! I've had the luck of my life. I caught the old man away from home, and gave that old woman a good one, whap, and got clean away. I'm a lucky fellow, I am."

he told her, beaming with triumph, spraying spittle in every direction as he recounted his great escape from disaster.

The rabbit hopped smartly backward to dodge the spray, and heard him out with a face that seemed to say, hmph,

"I don't see why I should rejoice over any of this. And it's disgusting, spitting all over the place like that. Besides, that old man and old woman happen to be friends of mine. Didn't you know?"

"Is that so,"

said the tanuki, thunderstruck, "I never knew. Forgive me. Had I only known, I'd have let myself be made into soup, tanuki soup or anything else, gladly."

and he drooped, utterly crestfallen.

"It's a bit late to say that now. You knew perfectly well I used to go play in that house's garden sometimes, and get treated to nice soft beans and things — you knew that. And then to lie and say you didn't know — that's awful of you. You're my enemy now."

she pronounced, mercilessly.

Already, by this point, something like a desire for revenge against the tanuki was stirring in the rabbit's heart.

A maiden's anger is a bitter thing.

Especially toward something ugly and dull-witted, it shows no mercy at all.

"Forgive me. I really, truly didn't know. I'm not lying. Believe me."

he pleaded, in a disagreeably clinging tone, stretching his neck out long and hanging his head pitifully, then, spotting a nut lying nearby, snatching it up and popping it in his mouth, and glancing about to see if there weren't any more, "Honestly, when you scold me like this, it makes me want to just die."

"What are you talking about. All you're thinking about is eating."

said the rabbit, turning up her nose as if utterly disgusted, "On top of being a lecher, you're disgustingly greedy too."

"Let it go, won't you. I'm hungry, that's all."

he said, still poking around here and there, "If only you could understand how wretched I feel right now."

"Don't come any closer, I told you. You stink. Get further away than that. I heard you ate a lizard, you know. I heard all about it. And — oh, this is funny — you ate droppings too, didn't you."

"Surely not."

the tanuki gave a weak, bitter laugh.

And yet, for some reason, he seemed unable to deny it very forcefully, and only added, still more weakly, twisting his mouth, "Surely not, though."

That was all he said.

"No use putting on airs. That smell of yours isn't ordinary stink, you know."

said the rabbit, calmly pronouncing this harsh verdict, and then, as if some other splendid idea had suddenly struck her, her eyes lit up, and, with a look on her face as if she were struggling not to laugh, she turned back to face the tanuki, "Well then, I'll forgive you, just this once. Ah, I said don't come any closer! There's no letting my guard down with you for a second. Why don't you wipe that drool off — your chin's all slobbery. Now settle down and listen carefully. I'll forgive you this once, specially, but there's a condition. That old man of yours is surely so discouraged by now that he hasn't the heart to go gathering brushwood on the mountain anymore, so let's you and I go gather brushwood for him instead."

"Together? You mean you'll come too?"

The tanuki's small, muddy eyes blazed with joy.

"Don't you want to?"

"Of course I want to! Let's go right now, today."

His voice went hoarse with sheer delight.

"Let's make it tomorrow, shall we — early tomorrow morning. You must be tired today, and hungry besides."

she said, oddly gentle.

"Thank you! Tomorrow I'll pack myself a big lunch and bring it along, and I'll work my heart out and cut a whole ten kan of brushwood, and I'll deliver it to the old man's house myself. And then you'll forgive me for sure, won't you. We'll be friends, won't we."

"You do go on. It depends on how well you do. Maybe I'll be friends with you, if you're lucky."

"Heh-heh,"

the tanuki suddenly gave an unpleasant laugh, "That mouth of yours, it's the worst. You're going to work me to the bone, you little devil. I'm just so—"

he was saying, when a large spider crawling by caught his eye, and he snapped it up in a flash, "I'm just so happy, I could practically cry a man's honest tears."

he said, sniffling, and made a show of crying, though it wasn't real.

A summer morning is a fresh, clean thing.

The surface of Lake Kawaguchi lay wrapped in morning mist, a white haze far below.

On the mountaintop, the tanuki and the rabbit, drenched from head to foot in morning dew, worked away busily cutting brushwood.

As for the tanuki's manner of working, far from heart and soul, it was practically half-crazed, a pitiful sight.

Grunting and groaning theatrically, hnnh, hnnh, he swung his sickle about in a wild frenzy, now and then letting out an exaggerated yelp of pain meant to be overheard, ow-ow-ow-ow, and altogether raged about every which way, plainly wanting nothing more than for the rabbit to see just how hard he was struggling.

After a good long spell of this ferocious thrashing about, he finally threw down his sickle with the utterly exhausted look of a man who simply couldn't go on,

"Look at this. Blisters, all over my hands. Ah, they sting. My throat's parched. I'm hungry too. Well, it was heavy labor, after all. Shall we call it a rest? Maybe open up the lunch box, eh? Heh-heh-heh."

he said, laughing in a strange, embarrassed way, and opened his great lunch box.

He thrust his snout right into that lunch box, big as an oil drum, and ate away with an utterly single-minded devotion, making all manner of noisy sounds — munch, gobble, smack.

The rabbit, looking utterly dumbfounded, paused her cutting a moment, glanced into that lunch box, and — ah!

— gave a small cry and covered her face with both hands.

Whatever it was exactly, something ghastly seemed to have been packed away in that lunch box.

But the rabbit that day, whether she had some private scheme of her own in mind or not, kept silent, not hurling her usual insults at the tanuki, only wearing a calculated little smile on her lips as she busily cut brushwood, and let pass, feigning not to notice, all the tanuki's various antics as he grew more and more full of himself.

She peeked into the tanuki's great lunch box and gave a start, but even so she said nothing, only gave a tight little shrug of her shoulders and set back to her brushwood-cutting.

The tanuki, finding himself treated with such remarkable indulgence by the rabbit that day, was fairly bursting with satisfaction, thinking, so she's finally fallen for me after all, watching me work so splendidly at cutting brushwood?

No woman alive could resist this manliness of mine, he thought — ah, I've eaten, I'm getting sleepy, might as well have a little nap — and, thoroughly letting his guard down, giving himself over entirely to his own whims, he fell fast asleep, snoring away with a great rumbling snore.

Even in his sleep, whatever foolish dream he was having, he muttered nonsensical things — love potions, they're no good, don't work at all — and did not wake until nearly noon.

"You certainly slept a long while."

said the rabbit, still gently, "I've already made up a bundle of brushwood myself, so let's carry it down now to the old man's garden."

"Ah, right, let's do that."

said the tanuki, giving a great yawn and scratching at his arm, "I'm dreadfully hungry. Once my stomach gets this empty, there's no sleeping through it any longer. I'm the sensitive type, you see."

he said, with an utterly self-important look, "Well then, shall I gather up my cut brushwood in a hurry and head down the mountain? My lunch box is empty now too, and I ought to get this job done quickly and then go find something to eat right away."

The two of them, each shouldering their own bundle of brushwood, set off for home.

"You walk ahead. There might be snakes around here, and I'm scared of them."

"Snakes? What's there to be scared of. The moment I spot one I'll grab it and—"

eat it, he was about to say, but caught himself, "I'll grab it and kill it for you. Come on, follow behind me."

"A man really is dependable at times like this, isn't he."

"Don't flatter me now."

he said, looking terribly pleased with himself, "You're being awfully sweet on me today, you know. It's almost unsettling. You're not planning on leading me off to that old man's place and having me made into tanuki soup, are you? Ha ha ha. That's the one thing I won't stand for."

"Oh, if you're going to be so oddly suspicious about it, never mind then. I'll go by myself."

"No, no, that's not what I meant. I'll come along, all right — there's nothing in this world I'm afraid of, snakes or anything else, but that old man is the one thing I really can't handle. Talking about making me into soup like that — I hate it. It's vulgar, if you ask me. Poor taste at the very least, I'd say. I'll carry this brushwood as far as that one hackberry tree just this side of the old man's garden, and you can bring the rest the rest of the way. I mean to make myself scarce right about there. Something about seeing that old man's face just puts me in the foulest mood, I can't say why. Oh? What's that. There's a strange sound. What could it be. Can't you hear it too? Some kind of clack, clack sound."

"Well, of course you'd hear it. This is Kachikachi Yama, after all."

"Kachikachi Yama? This mountain?"

"Yes, didn't you know?"

"No, I never knew. I never knew this mountain had a name like that, not until today. But what a strange name. That can't be true, can it?"

"Why, every mountain has a name, doesn't it? That one's Mount Fuji, and that one's Mount Nagao, and that one's Mount Omuro, every single one of them has a name. So this mountain's name is Kachikachi Yama. There, listen, you can hear it, clack, clack."

"Mm, I hear it. But it's strange. I've never once heard a sound like that on this mountain before. I was born on this mountain, and I've lived here going on thirty-some years now, and never once such a—"

"My! You're that old already? You told me the other day you were seventeen, and now this — it's terrible of you. Your face is all wrinkled and your back's a little bent too, so I did think it was strange you'd be seventeen, but I never dreamed you'd been hiding twenty whole years of your age. So then you must be nearly forty, my, isn't that something."

"No, no, seventeen, seventeen. I really am seventeen. The reason I walk all stooped over like this isn't my age at all, it's just that I'm hungry, and it naturally puts me in this posture. That thirty-some years business, that was about my elder brother. He's always got that phrase on his lips, so I suppose it just slipped out of me without thinking, that's all. A little something rubbed off on me, so to speak. That's all it was, my dear."

In his fluster, he found himself using the word "my dear."

"Is that so."

said the rabbit coolly, "But this is the first I've heard of you having an elder brother. Didn't you once tell me, I'm lonesome, you know, all alone in the world, no parents, no brothers — don't you understand this loneliness of mine? Now what was that about, I wonder?"

"Ah, right, right,"

said the tanuki, no longer certain himself what he was even saying, "The world really is a complicated place when you get down to it, you know, it's not so simple as all that. A brother here, no brother there."

"That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense."

said the rabbit, at last thoroughly exasperated, "It's absolute nonsense."

"Mm, well, the truth is, I do have one brother. It pains me to say it, but he's a drunken good-for-nothing, and I'm so ashamed, so mortified — for thirty-some years now, no, he has, my brother's been alive thirty-some years, and the whole time he's done nothing but cause me endless trouble."

"That's odd too. A seventeen-year-old having thirty-some years of trouble caused him."

The tanuki, pretending now not to have heard at all,

"There's plenty in this world you can't sum up in a word. Anyway, far as I'm concerned now I've written her off, disowned her — oh? That's strange, something smells scorched. You don't feel anything, do you?"

"No."

"Is that so."

The tanuki, being so used to eating foul-smelling things, had no confidence left in his own nose.

He tilted his head, puzzled, "Maybe it's just my imagination. Hold on, hold on, isn't that a fire burning somewhere, that crackling, roaring sound?"

"Well, of course it would be. This is Crackle-and-Roar Mountain, after all."

"Now you're lying. You just told me a minute ago this was Kachikachi Yama."

"That's right, but even the same mountain has different names depending on where you are on it. There's a Little Fuji partway up Mount Fuji, and Mount Omuro and Mount Nagao too, they're all part of the same range as Mount Fuji, aren't they. Didn't you know?"

"No, I never knew. Is that really so — this being Crackle-and-Roar Mountain, when for thirty-some years, no, according to my brother, this was just the plain old hill behind — no, wait, it's gotten dreadfully hot all of a sudden. It can't be an earthquake coming, can it? There's something eerie about today somehow. Ah, this is terribly hot! Yeeow! Ow-ow-ow-ow, this is awful, ow-ow-ow-ow, help, the brushwood's on fire! Ow-ow-ow-ow."

The next day, the tanuki lay holed up deep in his burrow, groaning,

"Ah, this is agony. I really might die this time, I might. When I think about it, there can't be a more unlucky man alive than me. Just because I happened to be born a bit good-looking, the women all hold back out of some kind of consideration and won't come near me. Being a refined-looking sort of man is nothing but a loss, honestly. They probably think I hate women. Well, I'm no saint, not by a long shot. I like women plenty. And yet the women seem to think I'm some high-minded idealist, and won't tempt me at all. At this rate I feel like running mad through the streets, screaming at the top of my lungs. I like women! Ah, it hurts, it hurts. This burn business really is a nasty thing. It throbs and throbs. Just when I thought I'd finally escaped being made into soup, I go and set foot on that ridiculous Roar Mountain or whatever it's called, and that was the end of my luck. What a rotten mountain that turned out to be. Brushwood bursting into a roaring blaze like that — it's outrageous. Thirty-some years,"

he started to say, then glanced sharply around him, "Why hide it any longer, I'm thirty-seven this year, hah, so what if I am, three more years and I'll be forty, it's plain as day, only natural, anyone can see it just by looking at me. Ow, ow, ow — still, in all my thirty-seven years, growing up playing on that hill behind, I've never once run into anything so strange as this. Kachikachi Yama, Roar Mountain — even the names are peculiar. Well now, isn't that odd."

he said, striking his own head and falling into gloomy thought.

Just then, out front, came the call of a peddler hawking his wares.

"Sen-kin balm, get your sen-kin balm! Anyone suffering from burns, cuts, or a dark complexion?"

The tanuki, more than burns or cuts, was struck to attention by the words dark complexion.

"Hey there, sen-kin balm."

"Yes, and where might you be, sir?"

"Over here, back in the burrow. Does it work on a dark complexion too?"

"Oh, that it does, in a single day."

"Well now,"

he said, delighted, and crawled his way out from the depths of his burrow, "Why! You're a rabbit."

"Yes, a rabbit I certainly am, but I'm a medicine peddler, and a man at that. Yes indeed, I've been out here peddling wares this way for thirty-some years now."

"Hmm,"

the tanuki sighed and tilted his head, "Well, isn't that something, there's a rabbit who looks just like someone I know. Thirty-some years, you say. Fancy that, you too. Well, let's leave off the talk of years and ages. Deadly dull subject. Awfully persistent of you, isn't it. Anyway, that's more or less how it is."

he said, floundering his way through some excuse or other, "Now then, would you let me have a little of that medicine? I happen to be suffering from a certain trouble just now, you see."

"My, what a dreadful burn. This is bad. Leave it be, and you'll die."

"No, if anything I'd sooner die. A burn like this is nothing to me. What's really troubling me is my looks, that—"

"What on earth are you talking about. This is a matter of life and death, isn't it. My, your back is the worst of it. Whatever happened to you?"

"Well now,"

the tanuki said, twisting his mouth, "it's just that I happened to set foot on this mountain with some pretentious name, Crackle-and-Roar or whatever it was, and, oh, it turned into an awful business, I was quite taken by surprise, let me tell you."

The rabbit could not help letting out a little giggle.

The tanuki had no idea why the rabbit was laughing, but he laughed along too, ha-ha,

"Really, it's just too ridiculous for words. I'll give you a word of warning too — whatever you do, don't ever go near that mountain. First there's Kachikachi Yama, and then eventually it turns into this Crackle-and-Roar Mountain business, and that part's no good at all. Turns into a terrible mess. Best to make your excuses and turn back around Kachikachi Yama somewhere. Set one careless foot into Roar Mountain, and this is what becomes of you, just as you see. Ow-ow-ow. You listening? I'm giving you fair warning. You still look young, so — well, it's not that I'm so very old myself, but anyway, don't go making light of it, take this friend's word to heart, won't you. After all, I speak from experience. Ow-ow-ow-ow."

"Thank you kindly. I'll be careful. Now then, what shall we do about the medicine? As thanks for your kind warning, I won't charge you a thing for it. In any case, let me apply it to that burn on your back. It's a lucky thing I happened to come by just now — otherwise you might well have lost your life over this. This must be some kind of guidance from above. A bond of fate, isn't it."

"A bond of fate, maybe so."

the tanuki said, in a low groan, "Well, if it's free, go ahead and put it on. I've been rather poor lately myself, you know — falling for a woman does cost a fellow money, no getting around it. Oh, and while you're at it, could you put a single drop of that balm on my palm, just to show me?"

"Whatever for?"

The rabbit's face took on an uneasy look.

"Oh, ha, it's nothing at all. I just want a little look at it, that's all. What sort of color it is, and so on."

"The color's no different from any other balm. It's just this."

and she set only the smallest amount on the tanuki's outstretched palm.

The tanuki moved so quickly to smear it on his face that the rabbit, startled, and unwilling to let the true nature of the medicine be exposed by such a blunder, caught his hand,

"Ah, no, you mustn't. This medicine is far too strong to put on your face. Absolutely not."

"No, let go of me."

the tanuki, past all caring now, said, "For heaven's sake, let go of my hand. You have no idea how I feel. You have no idea what a wretched, joyless time I've had of it for thirty-some years now, all because of this dark complexion. Let go. Let go of my hand. For heaven's sake, let me put it on."

At last the tanuki lashed out with a kick that sent the rabbit sprawling, and, quicker than the eye could follow, smeared the balm all over his face,

"My features, at least, aren't at all bad, I think — my eyes, my nose. It's only this dark complexion that's kept me feeling ashamed of myself. There now, I'll be fine. Yow! This is dreadful. It stings something awful. What a strong medicine. But I suppose a medicine has to be about this strong before it'll fix a complexion as dark as mine. Ow, this is terrible. But I'll bear it. Damn it all, next time she sees me she'll be so entranced by my face she won't be able to look away, heh-heh, and if she goes and falls sick with love for me after that, well, that's not my problem. That's certainly not my fault. Ah, it stings. This medicine clearly works. Well, now that I've started, go on and put it all over me, my back, anywhere, my whole body. I don't care if it kills me. So long as I come out fair-skinned, I don't care if I die for it. Go on, put it on. Don't hold back, slather it on good and thick."

It had truly become a tragic sort of spectacle.

And yet the cruelty of a beautiful, haughty young maiden knows no bounds.

It very nearly resembles that of a demon.

Perfectly calm, she rose to her feet and spread the tanuki's burn thickly with that same red-pepper paste.

The tanuki at once began writhing and thrashing about in agony,

"Nnngh, it's nothing at all. This medicine certainly does work. Waaah, this is dreadful. Water, give me water. Where am I? Is this hell? Have mercy on me. I've done nothing to deserve falling into hell. I only did away with that old woman because I hated the thought of being made into soup. There's no crime in me. All my thirty-some years, just because my skin was dark, no woman ever once looked twice at me. And then there's my appetite, ah, because of that too, you've no idea what shame I've suffered. Nobody knows it. I'm all alone in this world. I'm a good man at heart. My features aren't bad at all, I think."

he babbled out these pitiful ravings in his agony, and before long collapsed limp into a dead faint.

But the tanuki's misfortunes were not yet over.

Even I, the author, find myself sighing as I write this.

Perhaps nowhere else in the whole of Japanese history has anyone passed so thoroughly wretched a second half of his life.

No sooner had he escaped the fate of being made into soup, and thought himself lucky at last, than he suffered a pointless, terrible burn on Roar Mountain and barely escaped with his life, crawled his way somehow back to his own den, and, just as he lay there groaning and grimacing, had that very burn smeared thick with red pepper, fainting dead away from the pain — and then, after all that, at last he was set aboard a boat of mud and sunk to the bottom of Lake Kawaguchi.

There is truly not one redeeming moment in it.

This too, no doubt, was a kind of misfortune brought on by a woman, but even so, it is a singularly graceless sort of misfortune brought on by a woman.

There is not one shred of style or elegance in it.

For three days he lay deep in his den with barely a breath left in him, hovering, one could truly say, on the very borderline between life and death, whether alive or dead no one could quite tell, and on the fourth day, seized by a violent hunger, he leaned on a stick and staggered out of his den, muttering something to himself, and wandered here and there hunting for food, and the sight of him, in his misery, was beyond all comparison pitiable.

But being by nature a sturdy, big-boned creature, within ten days he had made a full recovery, his appetite as vigorous as ever, and even something of his old lust had begun stirring again — and, though he ought to have known better, he went trotting off once more to the rabbit's cottage.

"Just stopping by for a visit. Heh-heh."

he said, giving an embarrassed, unpleasant sort of laugh.

"Oh my!"

said the rabbit, and made no secret whatsoever of her distaste.

Oh, it's just you?

was the feeling — no, worse than that, even.

What on earth has he come back for, what nerve he has, was the feeling — no, worse than that, even.

Ah, I can't stand it!

The plague god has come!

was the feeling — no, worse than that, even.

Filthy!

Stinking!

Drop dead!

— it was a loathing of that utter extremity that was plainly written on the rabbit's face just then, and yet an uninvited guest is, as a rule, remarkably slow to notice such hatred on the part of his unwilling host.

It is truly a strange psychology.

My readers, too, would do well to be on their guard against it.

When you set off, dragging your feet, thinking how tiresome it is to go to that house, how stiflingly formal it always is there, it turns out, more often than not, the family is genuinely delighted at your visit.

Whereas when you set off in fine spirits, thinking, ah, what a pleasant house that is, practically like my own home, no, more comfortable even than my own home, my one true nest of rest, how I look forward to going there — it is precisely at that house, dear reader, that you will most often find yourself an unwelcome burden, thought filthy, feared, with a broom stood up pointedly behind the sliding screen.

To expect a nest of rest in someone else's house may itself be proof enough of foolishness, but in any case, when it comes to the matter of paying visits, we human beings are prone to the most astonishing misjudgments.

Barring some particular errand, one probably oughtn't go dropping in willy-nilly even on the home of one's closest kin.

Let any who doubt this author's warning look to the tanuki.

The tanuki was, at that very moment, plainly committing this dreadful error.

Oh my!

the rabbit had said, and pulled such a face of distaste, and yet the tanuki noticed not the slightest thing.

To the tanuki, that very cry of "Oh my!"

sounded to him like nothing so much as the artless, spontaneous cry of a maiden startled and, into the bargain, delighted by his sudden visit, and it sent a thrill of joy through him, and as for the frown that had crossed the rabbit's brow, he took it to mean, no doubt, that she had been grieving over his misfortune on Roar Mountain the other day, and said,

"Ah, thank you."

— thanking her for concern she had never once expressed, "No need to worry, you know. I'm quite all right now. I've got the gods on my side. Lucky fellow, that's me. That whole Roar Mountain business was nothing at all. Kappa meat, they say, is delicious. I keep thinking I ought to find some way to try it sometime. That's neither here nor there, though — but I'll tell you, I was startled that day. The flames were something terrible. How did things go for you? You don't look hurt at all — however did you manage to get clean away through all that fire?"

"It wasn't clean at all."

said the rabbit, pouting sulkily, "You were awful, you know. You left me all alone in that terrible fire and went running off without a second thought. I nearly choked to death on the smoke. I resented you for it, I really did. I suppose a person's true nature does come out at a time like that. Now I understand your true nature, quite clearly, this time."

"I'm sorry. Forgive me. The truth is I got a dreadful burn myself, and I started to think maybe the gods aren't on my side after all, I went through absolute hell. It's not that I ever forgot about you, not for a moment, but you see, my back suddenly got so hot I didn't have a spare second to come help you. Can't you understand? I'm not the sort of man who'd betray you, not really. This burn business is nothing to sneeze at, let me tell you. And on top of it, that sen-kin balm, or whatever it was called, that stuff's no good at all. Dreadful medicine. Didn't do a thing for my dark complexion either."

"Dark complexion?"

"Oh, nothing. It's this thick black paste of a medicine, you see, powerful stuff — a little fellow who looked a lot like you, odd little thing, said the medicine was free, so I figured, well, nothing to lose by trying it, and let him put it on me, but let me tell you, even free medicine, you'd better be careful with that sort of thing, no letting your guard down there either, I felt like a little tornado went spinning up right from the top of my head, and down I went in a heap."

"Hmph,"

said the rabbit, with contempt, "Serves you right, doesn't it. Being so stingy is exactly what got you punished. Trying it just because it was free — really, the nerve of you, saying something so crude without even blushing."

"That's an awful thing to say."

said the tanuki in a low voice, and yet he seemed to feel nothing at all by it, warmed through and through with sheer happiness at merely being near the one he loved, and settled his weight down heavily, glancing about with eyes as dull and glazed as a dead fish, picking up little insects here and there and eating them, "Still, I really am a lucky fellow, aren't I. Whatever happens to me, I never die. Maybe the gods really are on my side. It's good you came through safely too, and my burns healed up without any trouble at all, and now here we are, the two of us, having a nice leisurely chat again. Ah, it's just like a dream."

The rabbit had, for some time now, been desperate for him to leave.

She loathed him so, she felt half ready to die of it.

Wanting somehow to get him away from the vicinity of her cottage, she once again hatched a devilish little scheme.

"Say, did you know this Lake Kawaguchi is simply teeming with the most delicious crucian carp?"

"I didn't. Is that true?"

the tanuki's eyes lit up at once, "When I was three, my mother caught a crucian carp once and let me eat it, and it really was delicious. I'm not clumsy, mind you, not at all clumsy, but I've just never been able to catch anything living in the water, a carp or the like, so all I've had to go on, all these thirty-some years, is knowing how good it tastes, without ever — ha ha ha, there I go again, mimicking my brother's turn of phrase. He was fond of carp too, my brother."

"Is that so."

said the rabbit, murmuring some vague reply with her mind elsewhere, "I don't much care for eating carp myself, but if you're so fond of it, I could go along and help you catch some now, if you like."

"Would you really."

the tanuki said, thoroughly delighted, "But that carp, you know, it's a quick little thing — I once nearly drowned myself trying to catch one,"

he confessed, unable to help owning up to his own past failure, "Do you have some good method in mind?"

"Scooping them up in a net, it's nothing at all. There's been a great many big carp gathering lately along the shore of Ugashima. Come, let's go. Do you have a boat? Can you row?"

"Mm,"

he gave a faint sigh, "Not that I can't row, exactly. Once I set my mind to it, it's nothing at all."

he said, forcing out a painful boast.

"Can you really?"

said the rabbit, and though she knew perfectly well it was an empty boast, pretended to believe him all the same, "Well, that's perfect then. I do have one small boat, but it's much too small for the two of us to ride in together. Besides, it's just some flimsy thing knocked together out of thin planks, and the water seeps in, so it's dangerous. But whatever becomes of me hardly matters — it wouldn't do at all if something happened to you — so let's the two of us work together and build you a boat. A plank boat's too dangerous, so let's build a sturdier one, out of clay."

"You're too kind to me. I'm going to cry, you know. Just let me cry. I don't know why I'm such a soft-hearted fellow."

he said, making a show of tears that weren't real, "And while you're at it, would you mind building that sturdy little boat all by yourself? Go on, I'm counting on you."

he made this shameless little proposal without missing a beat, "I owe you one, I really do. While you're building that sturdy boat of mine, let me just go put together a lunch. I've a feeling I'd make a fine cook, myself."

"I suppose so."

said the rabbit, and gave an obedient little nod, as if she believed even this self-serving remark of the tanuki's.

And the tanuki smirked to himself, thinking, ah, isn't the world just an easy place after all.

In that single hairsbreadth moment, the tanuki's tragic fate was sealed.

That anyone who so readily believes whatever nonsense you tell them often harbors, in their heart, some dreadful scheme — this the foolish tanuki did not know.

Things are going splendidly, he thought, grinning to himself.

The two of them went down together to the lakeshore.

The white waters of Lake Kawaguchi lay without a single ripple.

The rabbit set at once to kneading clay and building her so-called sturdy, fine boat, while the tanuki, saying I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, hopped about here and there entirely absorbed in fussing over the contents of his own lunch, and by the time the evening breeze had risen faintly and small waves had begun to cover the whole surface of the lake, a little clay boat, gleaming a smooth steel-gray, slid down into the water.

"Hm, not bad at all."

said the tanuki, delighted, and loaded his lunch box, that great oil-drum-sized thing, into the boat first, "But my, aren't you a clever girl. Putting together such a fine little boat in no time at all. It's practically miraculous."

he said, laying on flattery so transparent it made one's teeth ache, and thought to himself, if I made a wife of such a clever, hardworking girl, I might well be able to live in idle luxury off her labor — and now, alongside his lust, a kind of greed too came stirring up in him, and he privately resolved, once and for all, that he simply had to attach himself to this woman for life, and clambered, with an effort, aboard the mud boat, "You must be a fine hand at rowing too, I'd wager. Not that I don't know how to row a boat myself, mind you — heavens, no, it's certainly not that I don't know how — but today I think I'd rather just sit back and watch my future wife's skill at work."

His manner of speaking had grown remarkably shameless.

"I was once called something of a master hand at rowing myself, or at least quite skilled at it, but today I think I'll just lie back and enjoy the view. Never mind, just go ahead and tie the bow of my boat to the stern of yours. Let our two boats stick close together, nice and friendly — if we sink, we sink together, don't you dare abandon me."

he said, with such a repulsive, affected air, and sprawled himself out limply in the bottom of the mud boat.

The rabbit, hearing him ask to have the boats tied together, thought with a start, could this fool have caught on to something after all?

and stole a glance at the tanuki's face, but there was nothing to it at all — the tanuki, grinning away with a foolishly besotted look, had already wandered off down the path of dreams.

Wake me when you catch a carp.

That stuff's delicious, it is.

I'm thirty-seven, you know.

such foolish sleep-talk he muttered.

The rabbit gave a little snort of a laugh, tied the tanuki's mud boat to her own, and struck the surface of the water with her paddle, splash.

Smoothly, the two boats slipped away from shore.

The pine grove of Ugashima, bathed in the evening sun, blazed like a fire.

Here the author will play the know-it-all for a moment: it is said that the design on the pack of Shikishima

cigarettes was drawn from a sketch of this very pine grove on this very island.

I heard this from a reliable source, so the reader may believe it without fear of being led astray.

Mind you, cigarettes called Shikishima

don't even exist anymore these days, so this is a story of no interest whatsoever to younger readers.

What a pointless bit of learning to go trotting out.

That is invariably how showing off one's knowledge ends up — in something this foolish.

Well, perhaps only readers who are themselves already past their thirty-some years will recall, ah, that pine, yes, along with some hazy memory of a night out with geisha, and pull a faintly bored face — that's about the best one could hope for from this digression.

Now the rabbit, gazing out entranced at the evening view of Ugashima, murmured,

"Oh, what a lovely sight."

she said.

This is, indeed, a rather strange thing.

One would think that not even the most wicked criminal alive could spare the leisure to gaze in rapture at the beauty of mountain and lake in the very moment before committing some atrocious crime, and yet here was this beautiful sixteen-year-old maiden, narrowing her eyes to admire the evening view of the island.

Truly, innocence and devilry are separated by no more than the thickness of a sheet of paper.

Let those men who go weak in the knees over the nauseatingly affected poses of some spoiled, hardship-ignorant young maiden, sighing that ah, youth is so pure and innocent — let them take care.

What such people call the "purity of youth,"

is often, just as in this example of the rabbit, nothing more than some chaotic, indiscriminate riot of the senses, quite untroubled that murderous intent and rapture should live side by side in the very same breast, without the least idea what it even is.

It is the most dangerous sort of beer-foam there is.

A state in which mere sensation overrides all ethics — this is what we call feeble-mindedness, or else devilry.

In those American films that were once the rage the whole world over, one used to see any number of these so-called "pure"

young men and women, fidgeting and darting about like clockwork toys, unable to bear the ticklish thrill of their own skin.

I don't mean to force the connection, but one is almost tempted to think this so-called "purity of youth"

had its true origin somewhere over in America.

That sort of thing — skiing along, la-di-da.

And all the while, behind it, committing the most stupidly wicked crimes without a second thought.

If not feeble-minded, then devilish.

Or perhaps devilry itself is, by its very nature, a kind of feeble-mindedness.

And so this small, slender, delicate-limbed sixteen-year-old maiden of a rabbit, once likened even to the moon goddess Artemis herself, has, at a single stroke, turned into something thoroughly tedious and uninteresting.

Feeble-minded, is she.

Well, there's nothing to be done about that, I suppose.

"Yeeikes!"

came a strange cry from down below.

It was the shriek of our dear, and thoroughly impure, thirty-seven-year-old friend, Mr. Tanuki.

"Water! Water! This is bad!"

"Oh, do be quiet. It's a mud boat, of course it's going to sink. Didn't you realize that?"

"I didn't realize it. This is beyond understanding. There's no sense to it at all. Surely this is too much to ask of a man. You couldn't possibly mean for me — no, surely not, like some kind of demon — no, I simply can't make sense of it at all. Aren't you my wife? Ah, it's sinking. At the very least, sinking is a plain and present fact before my eyes. Even as a joke, this is going too far. This is practically an act of violence. Ah, it's sinking. Hey, what are you going to do about this? My lunch is going to waste, isn't it. This lunch box has earthworm macaroni rolled in weasel droppings in it, you know. What a shame to waste it. Glub! Ah, I've gone and swallowed water now. Hey, please, enough of this cruel joking, that's quite enough. Hey, hey, don't you dare cut that rope! If we sink, we sink together, husband and wife bound for two lifetimes, a bond of fate that can't be cut even if you try to cut it — ah, no, you've gone and cut it! Help me! I can't swim, I confess it. I could manage a little, once, long ago, but a tanuki at thirty-seven has stiffness settling into every joint, there's just no swimming for me anymore. I confess it. I'm thirty-seven. You and I really are too far apart in age. Show some respect for your elders! Don't forget your duty to honor the aged! Glub! Ah, you're a good girl, aren't you, a good girl, so hold that paddle of yours out to me, won't you, let me grab hold of it — ow, ow, ow, what are you doing, that hurts, you're hitting me on the head with the paddle — ah, I see, I understand now! You mean to kill me, that's what this is, now I understand."

and only there, at the very brink of death, did the tanuki at last see through the rabbit's scheme — but it was already too late.

Whack, whack, down came the merciless paddle on his head, again and again.

The tanuki bobbed up and down on the lake's surface, glittering in the light of the setting sun,

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, this is too cruel. What terrible thing did I ever do to you? Is it so wrong to have fallen in love?"

he said, and sank straight down, and that was the end of him.

The rabbit wiped her face and said,

"Oh my, what a dreadful sweat."

That was all she said.

Now, is this perhaps meant as some warning against lechery?

Or perhaps a comic tale carrying the kindly hinted advice: never go near a beautiful sixteen-year-old maiden?

Or perhaps, again, it is a textbook of manners and etiquette, teaching that even when a girl takes your fancy, if you call on her too persistently, too relentlessly, you will in the end be met with the most extreme loathing, and suffer some terrible fate, even murder — so mind your restraint?

Or is it, again, a comic tale suggesting that people in this world, in their day-to-day lives, curse and punish, or else praise and submit to one another, not according to any moral right or wrong, but simply according to what their senses happen to like or dislike?

No, no — rather than fretting over some critic's neat conclusion of that sort, would it not be better simply to take note of that one thing the tanuki said in his dying moment, and leave it at that?

Namely: is it so wrong to have fallen in love?

It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that this one line has, since ancient times, been the single theme underlying every sorrowful story in the literature of the whole world.

In every woman there lives one such merciless rabbit, and in every man, that same good-natured tanuki, forever struggling and floundering on the point of drowning.

Judging even by this author's own thoroughly unsuccessful career of these thirty-some years, the truth of this was plain as day.

And no doubt, dear reader, in your case as well.

The rest is omitted.

The Tongue-Cut Sparrow

I had meant for this book, "Otogizoshi,"

to serve as a fitting little diversion, a small toy for the leisure moments of those doing brave battle to save Japan from her present crisis, and so, with a body that these days is forever running a slight fever, and none too sound besides, I have gone on writing it bit by bit in whatever spare time I could find, between being called out on service duties and setting my own bombed-out household back in some kind of order.

The Stolen Wen, Urashima-san, Kachikachi Yama, and then next, Momotaro and The Tongue-Cut Sparrow — with those I meant to bring this "Otogizoshi"

to a proper close, but the tale of Momotaro has already been pared down to the barest essentials, until he stands now as something like a symbol of Japanese manhood, and the thing has taken on the air less of a story than of a poem or a song.

Of course I too, at the outset, had meant to recast this Momotaro into a tale of my own.

That is to say, I meant to endow those ogres of Onigashima with some thoroughly hateful character.

I intended to draw them as creatures so hideous, so utterly and irredeemably wicked, that there could be no leaving them unconquered.

By this means I schemed to make Momotaro's conquest of the ogres win the reader's full sympathy, and to make the battle itself so truly perilous, so hair's-breadth a thing, that it would set the reader's palms sweating.

(When an author speaks of the plans for a work he has not yet written, he is almost always blowing this sort of guileless hot air.

It never does go quite so smoothly.)

Well now, in any case, do listen a moment.

It's only bluster, I know.

But hear me out without scoffing, if you would.

In Greek myth, surely the most treacherous and loathsome of all monsters is that snake-headed thing, Medusa.

Deep furrows of suspicion are carved between her brows, a wretched murderousness burns in her small gray eyes, her ashen cheeks tremble with menacing fury, and her thin, darkened lips are twisted as if wrenched by loathing and contempt.

And every single strand of her long hair is a red-bellied venomous snake.

Against any enemy, these countless serpents rear their heads as one, in an instant, and hiss out their hideous defiance.

Whoever so much as glimpsed this Medusa's face, they say, was seized by some nameless horror, his heart froze solid, and his whole body turned to cold stone.

It is less fear than sheer revulsion.

It does its damage not to a man's flesh but to his spirit.

A monster of this sort is the most hateful of all things, and one that must be put down without delay.

Set beside her, the monsters of Japan are simple creatures, and rather endearing at that.

The great bald spectre of the old temple, the one-legged umbrella-goblin, and the like are, for the most part, nothing more than harmless dancers put on display to while away some sake-loving hero's tedious hours between midnight and dawn.

And even the ogres of Onigashima in the picture books are all bulk and no substance — a monkey scratches one on the nose, and, oh!

— over he topples, surrendering on the spot.

There's nothing the least bit frightening about them.

One might almost take them for good-natured sorts.

At that rate, the grand ogre-conquest would make for a sorely deflated sort of tale.

Here, then, is a place where I simply must bring on some monster more ghastly, more thoroughly repellent, than even the head of Medusa.

Otherwise there is no hope of setting the reader's palms sweating.

And besides, if the conqueror Momotaro is made too strong, the reader will end up feeling sorry for the ogres instead, and the story will never work up that hair's-breadth thrill of true danger.

Even a hero as nearly invincible as Siegfried had that one weak spot on his shoulder, did he not?

Even Benkei, they say, had his tender spot; in any case, a hero of perfect, absolute strength simply does not suit a story.

And perhaps because I am myself a weakling, I flatter myself that I have some grasp of the psychology of the weak, but the psychology of the strong I confess I hardly know at all.

In particular, I have never once in my life met, nor even so much as heard tell of, some perfect, absolute strongman who loses to no one.

I am a storyteller of sorely impoverished imagination, unable to write so much as a line, a single character, without some grounding, however slight, in my own actual experience.

And so, in writing this tale of Momotaro, it is simply impossible for me, in any way, to bring on stage some invincible hero of a kind I have never once laid eyes on.

My Momotaro, then, will end up being something like this: a boy who from earliest childhood was a crybaby, frail of body, bashful, thoroughly hopeless — and yet, coming face to face with fiends of matchless vileness and hideousness, bent on destroying men's hearts and dragging them down into an eternal hell of despair, terror, and grudge, he thinks, weak as I am, I can no longer stand by and watch, and rises to his feet, ties a millet dumpling at his hip, and sets off for the very den of those fiends.

And as for those three retainers of his, the dog, the monkey, and the pheasant, they too will be anything but model helpers — each will have some vexing habit of his own, and now and then they'll fall to quarreling among themselves, so that I may well end up writing them rather like Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing out of Journey to the West.

But then, just as I was finally about to set to work, after Kachikachi Yama, on this "my own Momotaro,"

I found myself all at once seized by a deep, heavy reluctance.

I wanted, at the very least, to leave the tale of Momotaro alone, in its plain, simple form, just as it is.

This is no longer a mere tale.

It is a poem of Japan, sung and handed down by every Japanese since ancient times.

Whatever contradictions the plot may hold, no matter.

To go tampering now with the plain, buoyant spirit of this poem would be a disservice to Japan.

Momotaro is, after all, a man who carries the banner reading "Best in Japan."

An author who has never once been so much as second or third best in Japan, let alone best, has no business trying to portray such a splendid, first-rate fellow.

The moment I called to mind that banner of Momotaro's, that "Best in Japan,"

I abandoned, cleanly and without regret, my plan for "my own tale of Momotaro."

That was that.

And so I resolved instead to write the tale of the Tongue-Cut Sparrow next, and with that alone to bring this "Otogizoshi"

to a close, for the time being — I reconsidered, and settled on that.

In this Tongue-Cut Sparrow, as in the earlier Stolen Wen, Urashima-san, and Kachikachi Yama, no one bearing the title "Best in Japan"

ever appears, so my responsibility is a light one, and I have been free to write as I please — but once it comes to being Best in Japan, once it comes to being first, however nominally, in this precious country of ours, then even granting that it's only a fairy tale, no slapdash treatment can be allowed.

If some foreigner were to look at it and say, what, this is Japan's best? — how bitter a mortification that would be.

And so I want to press the point here, however tediously.

Neither the two old men of the Stolen Wen, nor Urashima-san, nor the tanuki of Kachikachi Yama, are by any means Best in Japan — Momotaro alone is Best in Japan, and I never did write that Momotaro, and so in this "Otogizoshi"

there is no such Best-in-Japan to be found; should he ever appear before your very eyes, your two eyes might well be struck blind by his brilliance.

Understood? Is that clear?

The characters who appear in this "Otogizoshi"

of mine are neither best, nor second, nor third in Japan, nor are they what one might call "representative figures"

either.

They are nothing more than thoroughly ordinary people, created out of the foolish experience and impoverished imagination of a writer named Dazai.

To try to weigh the worth of the Japanese people at large from these characters alone would be a piece of self-satisfied pedantry, very much like the man who notched his boat to mark where his sword had fallen overboard.

I hold Japan dear.

That goes without saying — and it is precisely for that reason that I have avoided portraying a Best-in-Japan Momotaro, and have gone on at such tedious length explaining why none of my other characters are Best in Japan either.

I rather hope the reader too will lend a good deal of sympathy to this odd little scruple of mine.

Now then, the hero of this Tongue-Cut Sparrow is, far from being Best in Japan, perhaps rather the most hopeless man in all Japan.

For one thing, he is frail of body.

A man of frail body seems to command less worldly value even than a lame horse.

He is forever coughing weakly, his complexion poor, and no sooner has he risen in the morning and run a duster over the paper doors of his room and swept out the dust with a broom than he is quite worn out, and spends the rest of the day lying down and getting up again by turns beside his desk, fidgeting about at this and that, and once supper is over he wastes no time laying out his own bedding and going straight to sleep.

This man has already kept up such a pitiful existence for more than ten years now.

He is not yet even forty, and yet for a good while now he has taken to signing himself "the old man,"

and has ordered the members of his own household to call him "Grandfather" as well.

One might call him a sort of hermit, one who has renounced the world.

But then even a hermit can only renounce the world because he has at least a little money to his name; a man without a penny, living hand to mouth, might well wish to renounce the world, but the world would only come chasing after him, and he could never quite manage to shake it off.

This "old man"

now lives in this humble little thatched hermitage of his, but he was, to begin with, the third son of a wealthy family; he defied his parents' hopes, took up no particular trade, and while drifting along in some vague life of farming in fair weather and reading in the rain, fell ill besides, until nowadays his parents and the whole rest of his family have written him off as a sickly, foolish, troublesome case, and simply see to it that he is sent a small monthly allowance, just enough that he need not worry over his daily bread.

And that is precisely why such a hermit-like existence is possible for him at all.

A humble thatched hermitage though it is, one must call his a rather comfortable lot, all the same.

And it is precisely such comfortably situated people who are of least use to anyone else.

His frailty seems real enough, but he is not so ill as to be bedridden, so there is surely no reason he could not manage at least some one useful occupation.

And yet this old man does nothing at all.

He seems to read a great many books, but whether he forgets each as soon as he has read it, or simply doesn't care to tell anyone what he's read, he never speaks of it to others.

He simply sits about, vacant.

This alone would already leave his worldly value close to nil, but on top of it this old man has no children.

More than ten years married now, and still no heir.

By this point he has, quite thoroughly, failed to fulfill a single one of his duties as a member of society.

One can't help feeling a certain curiosity about just what sort of woman a wife would have to be, to stick by such an unrewarding husband for a good ten-odd years.

And yet anyone who took a quiet peek over the hedge of that thatched hermitage would only be let down: oh, is that all.

A truly unremarkable woman, in every respect.

Her skin quite dark, her eyes wide and staring, her hands large and covered in wrinkles, and watching her go bustling about the garden, hands dangling before her, back a little bent, one might well take her for older than the "old man"

himself.

And yet she is, this year, only thirty-three, her unlucky year.

This woman had once served as a maid in the "old man's"

family home, and, being put in charge of caring for the sickly old man, had somehow ended up taking charge of his whole life besides.

She was quite unlettered.

"Now then, take off all your underthings and put them out here. I'm going to do the wash."

she says, in a tone sharp as a command.

"Next time."

the old man answers in a low voice, chin propped on his hand at the desk.

The old man always speaks in a terribly low voice.

And what's more, the latter half of anything he says trails off in his mouth, coming out as no more than a sort of "ah" or "uh."

Even the old woman, married to him these ten-odd years, can hardly make out what this old man says.

Let alone anyone else.

Being, as he is, more or less a man who has renounced the world, one might suppose it wouldn't much matter to him whether others understood him or not — but a man who holds no proper occupation, who reads books yet shows not the least sign of wanting to put that knowledge to any use in writing, who after ten-odd years of marriage has fathered not a single child, and who, on top of all that, even in ordinary conversation, spares himself the trouble of speaking clearly and lets the second half of his words dissolve into a mumble — call it laziness or what you will, in any case his passivity seems a thing beyond words.

"Hurry up and put them out, would you. Look, the collar of your undershirt is positively shining with grease."

"Next time."

he mutters again, half of it lost in his mouth.

"What? What did you say? Speak so a person can understand you."

"Next time."

he says, chin still propped on his hand, staring fixedly at the old woman's face without the least trace of a smile, this time a little more clearly.

"It's cold today."

"It's winter already. It's not just today — it's bound to be cold tomorrow and the day after too, you know."

she says, in the tone one uses to scold a child, and goes on, "Now tell me this — who's colder, someone sitting still indoors by the hearth like that, or someone out at the well doing the washing?"

"I don't know."

he answers with a faint laugh.

"Well, your well-side work is just what you're used to, is all."

"Don't be absurd."

the old woman says, scowling, "I certainly wasn't born into this world just to do the wash, you know."

"Is that so."

he says, quite unruffled.

"Now then, hurry up and take them off and hand them over. There's a full change of underthings in that closet there."

"I'll catch cold."

"Fine, then. Have it your way."

she says, biting the words off in irritation, and beats her retreat.

The setting is in the great bamboo grove overlooking the swift current of the Hirose River, at the foot of Mount Atago, in the outskirts of Sendai, in the Tohoku region.

Whether it is that sparrows have always been abundant in the Sendai region, the crest known as Sendai-zasa has two sparrows worked into its design, and everyone, I imagine, knows that a sparrow appears in the play Meiboku Sendai Hagi, in a role weightier than any thousand-ryo star actor's.

And when I myself traveled through the Sendai region last year, a friend of mine from those parts told me of the following, as an old nursery song of that district.

Kagome, kagome,

the sparrow in the cage,

when, oh when, will it come out.

This song, however, seems to be a children's game-song known all over Japan, not confined to the Sendai region alone, but

in the way it says "the sparrow in the cage,"

singling out the caged bird specifically as a sparrow, and in the way the Tohoku dialect word deharu, "comes out," fits in without the least sense of strain, it struck me that one might, without too much exaggeration, call this a folk song native to the Sendai region after all.

In the great bamboo grove around this old man's thatched hermitage too, countless sparrows lived, and morning and evening they set up a racket fit to deafen the ear.

That autumn, toward its end, on a morning when hail came skittering down through the great bamboo grove with a crisp, brisk sound, the old man found, lying on the garden earth, a little sparrow flailing on its back with an injured leg; he picked it up in silence, set it down by the hearth in his room, and fed it, and even after its leg had healed the sparrow went on playing about the old man's room, now and then hopping down into the garden but soon climbing back up onto the veranda, pecking at the food the old man tossed it, and when it left its droppings there, the old woman would say,

"Ugh, filthy thing."

and shoo it off, while the old man would rise without a word and carefully wipe the droppings from the veranda with a piece of paper from his sleeve.

As the days went by, the sparrow seemed to have learned to tell which person it might presume upon and which it might not: whenever the old woman alone was in the house, it kept to refuge in the garden or under the eaves, but the moment the old man appeared, it would come flying straight to him, perch for an instant atop his head, or hop about over his desk, drink from the water in his inkstone with a faint sound in its throat, or hide in his brush-holder, playing all sorts of pranks that got in the way of his studying.

But the old man, for the most part, pretended not to notice.

He was not the sort, as certain bird-fanciers in this world are, to hang some absurdly precious name on his beloved pet and coo,

"Lumi, dear, are you lonely too?"

nothing of that sort.

He wore an air of utter indifference as to where the sparrow went or what it did.

And yet now and then he would, without a word, bring a handful of feed from the kitchen and scatter it loosely along the veranda.

This sparrow, now, just after the old woman's exit, came fluttering in from under the eaves and perched for an instant on the edge of the desk where the old man sat with his chin propped on his hand.

The old man's expression did not change in the least; he simply watched the sparrow in silence.

It is right about here that the tragedy of this little sparrow's fate begins, by slow degrees.

After a while the old man said, just the one word, "Is that so."

That was all.

Then he heaved a deep sigh and opened a book on his desk.

He turned a page or two of the book, then propped his chin on his hand again and, gazing vacantly ahead, muttered, "Says she wasn't born to do the wash, the nerve of her. Seems there's still some vanity left in the old girl after all,"

and gave a faint, wry laugh.

At this moment, quite suddenly, the little sparrow on the desk spoke in a human voice.

"And what about you?"

The old man showed no particular surprise, and said,

"Me? Well now, let's see — I was born to tell the truth."

"But you don't say anything to anyone, do you."

"Everyone in this world is a liar, so I've simply lost all taste for exchanging words with anyone. Every last one of them does nothing but lie. And what's more terrifying still is that not one of them has the least notion he's lying."

"That's just a lazy man's excuse. Get a little learning under your belt and it seems anyone starts wanting to put on that same high-handed, world-weary air. You haven't done a single thing yourself, have you. There's a saying, you know — don't wake others while you yourself lie abed. You're in no position to talk about anyone else."

"That may well be so,"

said the old man, quite unflustered, "but there's room in the world for a man like me too. I may look as though I'm doing nothing at all, but that's not entirely the case. There are things only I can do. Whether the moment will ever come, in my lifetime, for my true worth to show itself, I couldn't say — but when it does come, I'll work hard enough, believe me. Until then, well, silence, and reading."

"I wonder about that."

the sparrow said, tilting its little head, "it's always the spineless closet-heroes who go puffing themselves up with that sort of sour-grapes bluster. A washed-up old has-been, is what I'd call it — a doddering old relic like you, swapping out his dead-and-gone past for some hope of the future, just to console himself. It's rather pitiful, really. That's not even bluster anymore. That's a perverse sort of whining. Because the plain fact is, you haven't done one single good thing."

"Put that way, well, perhaps you're right,"

said the old man, growing steadily more composed, "but there is one thing I'm carrying out splendidly, even now. And what's that, you ask? Freedom from desire. It's easy to say, but hard to practice. Take my old woman there — married to a fellow like me for a good ten-odd years now, so you'd think she'd have given up worldly desires by this point, but it seems that's not quite the case after all. Seems there's still some vanity left in her somewhere. It struck me as so funny I couldn't help bursting out laughing to myself just now."

Just then the old woman thrust her face in at the doorway.

"I've got no such vanity, thank you. Oh? Who were you talking to just now? I heard a young girl's voice in here. Where's that visitor of yours gone off to?"

"A visitor, was it."

the old man said, hedging as usual.

"No, you were most certainly talking to someone just now. And running me down while you were at it, too. Well, isn't that something — whenever you speak to me it's all mumbling and hemming, as if it were too much bother to get the words out, and yet with that girl you sounded like an entirely different man, all bright and youthful, chattering away in the highest of spirits. It's you who's still got vanity in you. Far too much of it, dripping all over the place."

"Is that so."

the old man answered vaguely, "but there's no one here."

"Don't you make fun of me."

the old woman said, seeming now to have worked herself into genuine anger, and she plopped herself down heavily at the edge of the veranda. "Just what do you take me for, anyway? I've put up with a great deal all this time. You've gone and made a complete fool of me, that's what you've done. Well, I know I wasn't raised well, and I've no learning, and maybe I'm no fit conversation partner for you, but this is really too much. I went into service at your family's house from the time I was young, and took care of you, and it came to this, and even your own parents said, that one's steady enough, marry her to our son and—"

"Nothing but lies."

"Now what part of that is a lie? What lie have I ever told you? Because isn't it true? Back in those days, wasn't I the one who understood your moods better than anyone? It had to be me, no one else would do. That's exactly why I ended up looking after you for the rest of my life, isn't it? Where, exactly, is the lie in that? Tell me that much, if you please."

she pressed, her color changing.

"All of it a lie. The sheer vanity of you back in those days, I tell you. That's all there was to it."

"And just what is that supposed to mean? I haven't the faintest idea. Don't you make a fool of me. I married you because I was thinking of your own good, that's all. There was no vanity in it, nothing of the sort. Really, the vulgar things you say. You've no idea how lonely I've been, morning and night, all because I went and married a man like you. The least you could do is offer a kind word now and then. Look at other married couples — however poor they are, don't they still sit together happily at dinner, chatting about this and that, laughing together? I'm not a greedy woman, not in the least. I'd bear anything at all for your sake. It's only that, once in a while, if you'd give me just one kind word, I'd be perfectly satisfied with that."

"Empty talk. Hollow as can be. Just when I think you've finally given it up, out come those same stale complaints all over again, trying to shift the ground under our feet. It won't work. Everything you say is nothing but a dodge — whatever suits your mood at the moment, that's all it ever is. It's you who's turned me into such a tight-lipped man. That chatting at dinner you're so fond of — isn't it mostly just picking apart the neighbors? Isn't it mostly just bad-mouthing people? And that too is nothing but the mood of the moment, running down whoever comes to mind. I've never once heard you praise a single soul. Even I have my weak moments — swept up by you, I find myself wanting to run people down too. And that's exactly what frightens me. That's why I decided I'd rather not speak to anyone at all anymore. All of you have eyes only for other people's faults, and not the faintest notion of how frightening you yourselves are. People frighten me."

"I understand now. You're sick of me. An old hag like me has finally started to grate on you. Oh, I understand perfectly well. What became of that visitor of yours a moment ago? Where's she hiding? It was certainly a young woman's voice, that. No wonder you'd rather not bother talking to an old woman like me, once you've gone and found yourself someone young like that. Talking all high and mighty about freedom from desire and looking so enlightened about it, and then the moment there's a young woman about, you go all aflutter, your very voice changes, and off you go chattering away — it's disgusting."

"Fine, then, have it your way."

"It is not fine. Where is that visitor? It would be rude of me not to say a proper hello to a guest. Whatever I may look like, I am still the lady of this house, you know, so let me greet her properly. Don't you go trampling all over me like this."

"Here she is."

the old man said, jutting his chin toward the sparrow playing on the desk.

"What? Don't be ridiculous. Since when does a sparrow talk?"

"It does. And a rather clever tongue on it too, I'll say."

"So you mean to go on mocking me out of pure spite, is that it. Fine, then. Have it your way."

She shot her arm out and snatched the little sparrow up off the desk in a fierce grip. "If it's such clever talk it's so fond of, I'll just pull its tongue right out, so it can't say another word. You've always doted on this sparrow far too much for my liking. It's disgusted me no end, I'll have you know. And what perfect timing — since you've let that young lady visitor of yours slip away, I'll take this sparrow's tongue as a substitute. Serves it right."

She pried open the little bird's beak with her fingers and, with a sharp tug, tore out its tiny tongue, no bigger than a rape-blossom petal.

The sparrow fluttered up and away, high into the sky.

The old man watched the sparrow's flight in silence.

And so it was that, from the very next day, the old man's search through the great bamboo grove began.

Tongue-cut sparrow,

where is your home,

tongue-cut sparrow,

where is your home,

day after day, the snow kept falling.

Even so, the old man, as though possessed by something, went on searching through the deep, great bamboo grove.

In that grove there were sparrows by the thousand, by the tens of thousands.

Picking out from among them the one little sparrow whose tongue had been torn away seemed a wellnigh impossible task, and yet the old man went on searching, day after day, with a strange, unaccountable fervor.

Tongue-cut sparrow,

where is your home,

tongue-cut sparrow,

where is your home,

never once before, it seemed, in the whole course of the old man's life, had he acted with anything like this reckless, headlong passion.

It looked as though something that had lain sleeping in the old man's heart had, for the first time, lifted its head — but what that something was, the present writer (Dazai) cannot say.

A person who, even in his own home, has gone about with the uneasy air of a stranger in someone else's house, suddenly meets the one presence that puts him most at ease, and goes chasing after it — call that love, and the matter is settled, and yet the old man's feeling here may well be a far lonelier thing than whatever is meant by that word love, so glibly spoken of in general.

The old man searched as though in a trance.

It was the first stubborn, active passion of his entire life.

Tongue-cut sparrow,

where is your home,

tongue-cut sparrow,

where is your home,

it isn't as though he actually went about singing this aloud as he searched.

But the wind would whisper it, just so, at his ear, and somehow, before he knew it, that same odd little phrase, neither quite a song nor quite a prayer, would well up in his own heart too, in time with each step he took, treading down the snow beneath the bamboo, matching itself to the whisper of the wind at his ear.

One night there fell a snow heavy even for the Sendai region, a rare thing indeed, and the next day dawned bright and clear, the world laid out in a dazzling silver, and the old man, early that morning, pulled on his straw boots and went wandering, as ever, through the bamboo grove, saying

Tongue-cut sparrow,

where is your home,

tongue-cut sparrow,

where is your home,

when a great clump of snow piled on the bamboo suddenly came crashing down upon the old man's head, and, struck perhaps in some bad spot, he lost consciousness and collapsed onto the snow.

In that dim borderland between dream and vision, whispering voices, many of them, came drifting to his ears.

"Poor thing, he's gone and died after all, hasn't he."

"No, no, he hasn't died. He's only fainted."

"But if he just lies there on the snow like that much longer, he'll freeze to death, surely."

"That's true enough. We'll have to do something about it. This is a fine mess. If only that girl had gone out to him sooner, before it ever came to this. Whatever has become of her, anyway?"

"You mean Otsuru?"

"Yes — someone played some cruel trick on her and hurt her mouth, it seems, and she hasn't shown her face around here at all since then."

"She's lying down. With her tongue torn out she can't say a word, poor thing, and just lies there, the tears rolling down, weeping and weeping."

"Is that so — her tongue torn out, was it. What a cruel trick for anyone to play."

"Yes, well, that was this man's wife who did it. She's not a bad woman, really, but she must have been in an odd temper that day, and out of nowhere she went and ripped out poor Otsuru's tongue."

"You saw it happen?"

"Yes, and it was frightful. To think that a human being could do something so cruel, so suddenly, like that."

"Jealousy, I'd wager. I know this man's household well enough myself, and if you ask me, he's always thought far too little of his wife. It's no good doting on a wife too much, but it's no good being so cold to her either, and that Otsuru took full advantage of it, carrying on so shamelessly friendly with the master of the house. In the end, they're all to blame. Best leave it be."

"Oh, aren't you the one who's jealous, though? You were fond of Otsuru yourself, weren't you? No use hiding it. Didn't you sigh, just the other day, and say she had the finest voice of anyone in this whole great bamboo grove?"

"I'm not the sort to stoop to something so unseemly as jealousy. But it's true enough, at least, that Otsuru had the better voice of the two of you — and she was the prettier one besides."

"That's cruel."

"Enough quarreling, it's pointless. More to the point, what are we going to do about this man here? If we just leave him, he'll die. Poor thing. Just look how badly he must want to see Otsuru — searching through this bamboo grove every single day, and now look what's become of him — it's pitiful, isn't it. This must be a man of real, true feeling."

"Feh, he's a fool, that's what he is. A grown man of his years, chasing after a baby sparrow — an utterly hopeless fool."

"Don't say such things. Come now, let's let them meet. Otsuru seems to want to see him too, from the look of her. But of course, with her tongue torn out she can't speak a word, so however much we tell her that he's searching for her, all she does is lie there in the depths of the grove, the tears just streaming down. This man is pitiful enough, but Otsuru is just as pitiful too. Come now, let's do something about it, between all of us."

"Not me. I've never had much patience for matters of love and romance, myself."

"This isn't love and romance. You just don't understand. Now then, everyone, let's find some way to bring them together, shall we. This isn't a matter for logic and reason."

"Right you are, right you are. I'll take care of it. It's nothing at all. We'll ask the god. Whenever you want, without any particular reason, to do something for someone else's sake, asking the god is always the best way. My old father taught me that once. At times like that, they say, the god will grant you anything you ask. Now then, all of you, just wait here a moment. I'm off to ask the god of the shrine grove."

When the old man's eyes suddenly came open, he found himself in a neat, tidy little room with pillars of bamboo.

As he sat up and looked about him, the sliding door slid open, and out came a doll-like little figure, perhaps two feet tall, who said,

"Oh, are you awake?"

"Ah,"

the old man laughed, quite composed, "where might this be, I wonder."

"The Sparrows' Inn."

the doll-like, lovely little girl answered, sitting herself properly before the old man and blinking her perfectly round eyes.

"I see."

the old man nodded calmly, "then are you, perhaps, that tongue-cut sparrow?"

"No, Otsuru is asleep in the inner room. I'm Osuzu. I'm Otsuru's very best friend."

"I see. Then the little sparrow whose tongue was torn out — her name is Otsuru, is it?"

"Yes, and she's a very gentle, very good person. Do go and see her soon. Poor thing, she can't speak anymore, and every day she just lies there, the tears streaming and streaming."

"Let me see her, then."

the old man said, rising to his feet, "where is she lying?"

"I'll take you there."

Osuzu rose, her long sleeves fluttering, and stepped out onto the veranda.

The old man crossed the narrow green-bamboo veranda carefully, mindful not to slip.

"Here it is. Please, go in."

Led by Osuzu, he entered the innermost room.

It was a bright room.

In the garden, small bamboo grass grew thick over every inch of ground, and between the blades a shallow, clear stream went rushing swiftly by.

Otsuru lay there under a small quilt of red silk.

She was an even more elegant, more beautiful doll-like little figure than Osuzu, though her face was a little pale.

She fixed her large eyes on the old man's face and gazed at him steadily, and the tears rolled and rolled down her cheeks.

The old man sat himself down cross-legged at her pillow, and, without a word, watched the clear stream running swiftly through the garden.

Osuzu quietly slipped away from the room.

There was no need for words at all.

The old man let out a faint sigh.

It was not a sigh of melancholy.

For the first time in his life, the old man was experiencing peace of heart.

That joy had simply shown itself as a faint sigh.

Osuzu came quietly back in, carrying sake and little dishes of food, and said,

"Please, take your time."

she said, and left the room.

The old man poured himself a single cup of sake and drank it, then went back to gazing at the clear stream in the garden.

The old man was not what one would call a heavy drinker.

A single cup was enough to leave him pleasantly tipsy.

He picked up his chopsticks and took a single piece of bamboo shoot from the tray, and ate it.

It was wonderfully delicious.

But the old man was no great eater.

That single piece was enough, and he set down his chopsticks.

The sliding door opened, and Osuzu came in again, bringing more sake and a different dish.

She sat down before the old man and said,

"How about some more?"

urging the sake on him.

"No, I've had quite enough. But this is a fine sake, this."

He was not merely being polite.

The words had simply come out of him, unbidden.

"Does it please you? It's called Sasa no Tsuyu — Dew on the Bamboo Grass."

"Too fine, if anything."

"What?"

"Too fine, if anything."

Otsuru, lying there listening to the old man and Osuzu talk, smiled.

"Oh look, Otsuru's smiling. I imagine she wants to say something."

Otsuru shook her head.

"It's fine, even if you can't say it. Isn't that so?"

said the old man, turning to speak to Otsuru directly for the first time.

Otsuru blinked her eyes and nodded two or three times, looking pleased.

"Well then, I'll take my leave. I'll come again."

Osuzu, seeming quite taken aback at how curt this visitor was proving to be, said,

"What, you're leaving already? After searching all through the bamboo grove until you very nearly froze to death, and finally getting to see her today, and you can't even manage a single kind word of comfort—"

"Kind words are exactly what I can't stand, I'm afraid."

the old man said with a wry smile, already on his feet.

"Otsuru, is it all right? If I send him home now?"

Osuzu asked Otsuru hurriedly.

Otsuru laughed and nodded.

"Well, you two are certainly a matched pair."

Osuzu said, breaking into laughter herself, "do come again, then, won't you."

"I will."

he answered gravely, and, turning to leave the room, stopped short and said, "Where exactly is this place, anyway?"

"In the middle of the bamboo grove."

"Is that so? I wonder — was there ever such a curious house as this, in the middle of that bamboo grove?"

"There is one."

Osuzu said, exchanging a smile with Otsuru, "but ordinary people can't see it. If you come and lie face-down on the snow at the mouth of the bamboo grove, like you did this morning, we'll always bring you here, any time."

"That's a great kindness."

he said, and this time it was no mere politeness — the words came unbidden — and he stepped out onto the green-bamboo veranda.

And then, led once more by Osuzu, he returned to the same neat, tidy sitting room as before, where now there stood a row of wicker trunks, large and small, of every size.

"I'm ashamed that we've been able to offer you so little hospitality, even after you've troubled yourself to come all this way,"

Osuzu said, her manner turning formal, "so please, at the very least, as a small token from the sparrows' village, take whichever of these trunks pleases you, however much of a bother it may be to carry."

"I don't want anything like that."

the old man muttered, sounding put out, and, sparing not so much as a glance at the many trunks, said, "Where are my shoes?"

"You'll put me in a terrible spot. Do take just one home with you, please."

Osuzu said, on the verge of tears, "I'll be scolded by Otsuru afterward, otherwise."

"She won't scold you. That girl would never scold anyone, I know that much already. Now then, where are my shoes? I came in a pair of filthy straw boots, I believe."

"We threw them away. It would be nice if you went home barefoot."

"That's a bit much."

"Well then, do take just one souvenir home with you. I'm begging you, please."

she said, pressing her tiny hands together.

The old man gave a wry smile, glanced briefly at the trunks lined up around the room, and said,

"They're all so big. Far too big. I hate carrying luggage around. Don't you have some small souvenir, small enough to fit inside my robe?"

"Even if you ask for something so unreasonable, I—"

"Then I'll be going. Barefoot is fine. Luggage, no thank you."

the old man said, and made as if he truly meant to go dashing straight out past the veranda, barefoot as he was.

"Wait, please, just a moment. I'll go and ask Otsuru."

Osuzu went flitting off to the inner room, and before long came back holding an ear of rice in her mouth.

"Here — this is Otsuru's own hair ornament. Please don't forget her. Do come again."

He came to himself with a sudden start.

The old man was lying face-down at the mouth of the bamboo grove.

What, was it all a dream, then.

And yet in his right hand he held an ear of rice.

An ear of rice, in the dead of winter, was a rare thing indeed.

And it gave off a wonderful fragrance, like that of a rose.

The old man carried it carefully home and set it in the brush-holder on his desk.

"Oh, what's that?"

The old woman, who had been doing needlework in the house, spotted it at once with her sharp eyes, and demanded to know.

"An ear of rice."

he said, in that same mumbling tone as ever.

"An ear of rice? That's a rare thing to see, this time of year. Where did you pick that up?"

"I didn't pick it up."

he said quietly, and opened a book and began reading silently to himself.

"Isn't that strange, though? Wandering around in that bamboo grove every day lately, coming home looking half-dazed, and then today of all days you come back looking oddly pleased with yourself, carrying that thing, and go and stick it in your brush-holder with such an air of importance — you're hiding something from me, aren't you. If you didn't pick it up, then what did happen? You might as well just tell me plainly."

"I got it as a gift, from the sparrows' village."

the old man said curtly, sounding annoyed.

But that was hardly enough to satisfy the old woman, practical realist that she was.