STORY2 - THE SPIRIT OF THE WILLOW TREE

THE SPIRIT OF THE WILLOW TREE

ABOUT one thousand years ago (but according to the dates of the story 744 years ago) the temple of 'San-ju-san-gen Do' was founded. That was in 1132. 'San-ju-san-gen Do' means hall of thirty-three spaces; and there are said to be over 33,333 figures of the Goddess Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy, in the temple to-day. Before the temple was built, in a village near by stood a willow tree of great size. It marked the playing-ground of all the village children, who swung on its branches, and climbed on its limbs. It afforded shade to the aged in the heat of summer, and in the evenings, when work was done, many were the village lads and lasses who vowed eternal love under its branches. The tree seemed an influence for good to all. Even the weary traveller could sleep peacefully and almost dry under its branches. Alas, even in those times men were often ruthless with regard to trees. One day the villagers announced an intention to cut it down and use it to build a bridge across the river.

There lived in the village a young farmer named Heitaro, a great favourite, who had lived near the old tree all his days, as his forefathers had done; and he was greatly against cutting it down.

Such a tree should be respected, thought he. Had it not braved the storms of hundreds of years? In the heat of summer what pleasure it afforded the children! Did it not give to the weary shelter, and to the love-smitten a sense of romance? All these thoughts Heitaro impressed upon the villagers. 'Sooner than approve your cutting it down,' he said, 'I will give you as many of my own trees as you require to build the bridge. You must leave this dear old willow alone for ever.'

The villagers readily agreed. They also had a secret veneration for the old tree.

Heitaro was delighted, and readily found wood with which to build the bridge.

Some days later Heitaro, returning from his work, found standing by the willow a beautiful girl.

Instinctively he bowed to her. She returned the bow. They spoke together of the tree, its age and beauty. They seemed, in fact, to be drawn towards each other by a common sympathy. Heitaro was sorry when she said that she must be going, and bade him good-day. That evening his mind was far from being fixed on the ordinary things of life. 'Who was the lady under the willow tree? How I wish I could see her again!' thought he. There was no sleep for Heitaro that night. He had caught the fever of love.

Next day he was at his work early; and he remained at it all day, working doubly hard, so as to try and forget the lady of the willow tree; but on his way home in the evening, behold, there was the lady again! This time she came forward to greet him in the most friendly way.

'Welcome, good friend!' she said. 'Come and rest under the branches of the willow you love so well, for you must be tired.'

Heitaro readily accepted this invitation, and not only did he rest, but also he declared his love.

Day by day after this the mysterious girl (whom no others had seen) used to meet Heitaro, and at last she promised to marry him if he asked no questions as to her parents or friends. 'I have none,' she said. 'I can only promise to be a good and faithful wife, and tell you that I love you with all my heart and soul. Call me, then, "Higo," [*1] and I will be your wife.'

Next day Heitaro took Higo to his house, and they were married. A son was born to them in a little less than a year, and became their absorbing joy. There was not a moment of their spare time in which either Heitaro or his wife was not playing with the child, whom they called Chiyodo. It is doubtful if a more happy home could have been found in all Japan than the house of Heitaro, with his good wife Higo and their beautiful child.

Alas, where in this world has complete happiness ever been known to last? Even did the gods permit this, the laws of man would not.

When Chiyodo had reached the age of five years--the most beautiful boy in the neighbourhood--the ex-Emperor Toba decided to build in Kyoto an immense temple to Kwannon. He would contribute 1001 images of the Goddess of Mercy. (Now, in 1907, as we said at the beginning, this temple is known as 'San-ju-san-gen Do,' and contains 33,333 images.)

The ex-Emperor Toba's wish having become known, orders were given by the authorities to collect timber for the building of the vast temple; and so it came to pass that the days of the big willow tree were numbered, for it would be wanted, with many others, to form the roof.

Heitaro tried to save the tree again by offering every other he had on his land for nothing; but that was in vain. Even the villagers became anxious to see their willow tree built into the temple. It would bring them good luck, they thought, and in any case be a handsome gift of theirs towards the great temple.

The fatal time arrived. One night, when Heitaro and his wife and child had retired to rest and were sleeping, Heitaro was awakened by the sound of axes chopping. To his astonishment, he found his beloved wife sitting up in her bed, gazing earnestly at him, while tears rolled down her cheeks and she was sobbing bitterly.

'My dearest husband,' she said with choking voice, pray listen to what I tell you now, and do not doubt me. This is, unhappily, not a dream. When we married I begged you not to ask me my history, and you have never done so; but I said I would tell you some day if there should be a real occasion to do so. Unhappily, that occasion has now arrived, my dear husband. I am no less a thing than the spirit of the willow tree you loved, and so generously saved six years ago. It was to repay you for this great kindness that I appeared to you in human form under the tree, hoping that I could

live with you and make you happy for your whole life. Alas, it cannot be! They are cutting down the willow. How I feel every stroke of their axes! I must return to die, for I am part of it. My heart breaks to think also of leaving my darling child Chiyodo and of his great sorrow when he knows that his mother is no longer in the world. Comfort him, dearest husband! He is old enough and strong enough to be with you now without a mother and yet not suffer. I wish you both long lives of prosperity. Farewell, my dearest! I must be off to the willow, for I hear them striking with their axes harder and harder, and it weakens me each blow they give.'

Heitaro awoke his child just as Higo disappeared, wondering to himself if it were not a dream. No: it was no dream. Chiyodo, awaking, stretched his arms in the direction his mother had gone, crying bitterly and imploring her to come back.

My darling child,' said Heitaro, 'she has gone. She cannot come back. Come: let us dress, and go and see her funeral. Your mother was the spirit of the Great Willow.'

A little later, at the break of day, Heitaro took Chiyodo by the hand and led him to the tree. On reaching it they found it down, and already lopped of its branches. The feelings of Heitaro may be well imagined.

Strange! In spite of united efforts, the men were unable to move the stem a single inch towards the river, in which it was to be floated to Kyoto.

On seeing this, Heitaro addressed the men.

'My friends,' said he, 'the dead trunk of the tree which you are trying to move contains the spirit of my wife. Perhaps, if you will allow my little son Chiyodo to help you, it will be more easy for you; and he would like to help in showing his last respects to his mother.'

The woodcutters were fully agreeable, and, much to their astonishment, as Chiyodo came to the back end of the log and pushed it with his little hand, the timber glided easily towards the river, his father singing the while an 'Uta.'

STORY1 - THE GOLDEN HAIRPIN

THE GOLDEN HAIRPIN

UP in the northern city of Sendai, whence come the best of Japanese soldiers, there lived a samurai named Hasunuma.

Hasunuma was rich and hospitable, and consequently much thought of and well liked. Some thirty-five years ago his wife presented him with a beautiful daughter, their first child, whom they called 'Ko,' which means 'Small' when applied to a child, much as we say 'Little Mary or Little Jane.' Her full name was really 'Hasu-ko,' which means 'Little Lily'; but here we will call her 'Ko' for short.

Exactly on the same date, 'Saito,' one of Hasunuma's friends and also a samurai, had the good fortune to have a son. The fathers decided that, being such old friends, they would wed their children to each other when old enough to marry; they were very happy over the idea, and so were their wives. To make the engagement of the

babies more binding, Saito handed to Hasunuma a golden hairpin which had long been in his family, and said:

'Here, my old friend, take this pin. It shall be a token of betrothal from my son, whose name shall be Konojo, to your little daughter Ko, both of whom are now aged two weeks only. May they live long and happy lives together.'

Hasunuma took the pin, and handed it to his wife to keep; then they drank sake to the health of each other, and to the bride and bridegroom of some twenty years thence.

A few months after this Saito, in some way, caused displeasure to his feudal lord, and, being dismissed from service, left Sendai with his family--whither no one knew.

Seventeen years later O Ko San was, with one exception, the most beautiful girl in all Sendai; the exception was her sister, O Kei, just a year younger, and as beautiful as herself.

Many were the suitors for O Ko's hand; but she would have none of them, being faithful to the engagement made for her by her father when she was a baby. True, she had never seen her betrothed, and (which seemed more curious) neither she nor her family had ever once heard of the Saito family since they had left Sendai, over sixteen years before; but that was no reason why she, a Japanese girl, should break the word of her father, and therefore O Ko San remained faithful to her unknown lover, though she sorrowed greatly at his non-appearance; in fact, she secretly suffered so much thereby that she sickened, and three months later died, to the grief of all who knew her and to her family's serious distress.

On the day of O Ko San's funeral her mother was seeing to the last attentions paid to corpses, and smoothing her hair with the golden pin given to Ko San or O Ko [*1] by Saito in behalf of his son Konojo. When the body had been placed in its coffin, the mother thrust the pin into the girl's hair, saying:

'Dearest daughter, this is the pin given as a memento to you by your betrothed, Konojo. Let it be a pledge to bind your spirits in death, as it would have been in life; and may you enjoy endless happiness, I pray.'

In thus praying, no doubt, O Ko's mother thought that Konojo also must be dead, and that their spirits would meet; but it was not so, for two months after these events Konojo himself, now eighteen years of age, turned up at Sendai, calling first on his father's old friend Hasunuma.

'Oh, the bitterness and misfortune of it all!' said the latter. 'Only two months ago my daughter Ko died. Had you but come before then she would have been alive now. But you never even sent a message; we never heard a word of your father or of your mother. Where did you all go when you left here? Tell me the whole story.'

'Sir,' answered the grief-stricken Konojo, 'what you tell me of the death of your daughter, whom I had hoped to marry, sickens my heart, for I, like herself, had been faithful, and I hoped to marry her, and thought daily of her. When my father took my family away from Sendai, he took us to Yedo; and afterwards we went north to

[paragraph continues] Yezo Island, where my father lost his money and became poor. He died in poverty. My poor mother did not long survive him. I have been working hard to try and earn enough to marry your daughter Ko; but I have not made more than enough to pay my journey down to Sendai. I felt it my duty to come and tell you of my family's misfortune and my own.'

The old samurai was much touched by this story. He saw that the most unfortunate of all had been Konojo.

'Konojo,' he said, 'often have I thought and wondered to myself, Were you honest or were you not? Now I find that you have been truly faithful, and honest to your father's pledge. But you should have written--you should have written! Because you did not do so, sometimes we thought, my wife and I, that you must be dead; but we kept this thought to ourselves, and never told Ko San. Go to our Butsudan; [*1] open the doors of it, and burn a joss stick to Ko San's mortuary tablet. It will please her spirit. She longed and longed for your return, and died of that sane longing--for love of you. Her spirit will rejoice to know that you have come back for her.'

Konojo did as he was bid.

Bowing reverently three times before the mortuary tablet of O Ko San, he muttered a few words of prayer in her behalf, and then lit the incense-stick and placed it before the tablet.

After this exhibition of sincerity Hasunuma told the young fellow that he should consider him as an adopted son, and that he must live with them. He could have

the small house in the garden. In any case, whatever his plans for the future might be, he must remain with them for the present.

This was a generous offer, worthy of a samurai. Konojo gratefully accepted it, and became one of the family. About a fortnight afterwards he settled himself in the little house at the end of the garden. Hasunuma, his wife, and their second daughter, O Kei, had gone, by command of the Daimio, to the Higan, a religious ceremony held in March; Hasunuma also always worshipped at his ancestral tombs at this time. Towards the dusk of evening they were returning in their palanquins. Konojo stood at the gate to see them pass, as was proper and respectful. The old samurai passed first, and was followed by his wife's palanquin, and then by that of O Kei. As this last passed the gate Konojo thought he heard something fall, causing a metallic sound. After the palanquin had passed he picked it up without any particular attention.

It was the golden hairpin; but of course, though Konojo's father had told him of the pin, Konojo had no idea that this was it, and therefore he thought nothing more than that it must be O Kei San's. He went back to his little house, closed it for the night, and was about to retire when he heard a knock at the door. 'Who is there?' he shouted. 'What do you want?' There came no answer, and Konojo lay down on his bed, thinking himself to have been mistaken. But there came another knock, louder than the first; and Konojo jumped out of bed, and lit the ando. 'If not a fox or a badger,' thought he, 'it must be some evil spirit come to disturb me.'

On opening the door, with the ando in one hand, and a stick in the other, Konojo looked out into the dark, and there, to his astonishment, he beheld a vision of female beauty the like of which he had never seen before. 'Who are you, and what do you want?' quoth he.

'I am O Kei San, O Ko's younger sister,' answered the vision. 'Though you have not seen me, I have several times seen you, and I have fallen so madly in love with you that I can think of nothing else but you. When you picked up my golden pin to-night on our return, I had dropped it to serve as an excuse to come to you and knock. You must love me in return; for otherwise I must die!'

This heated and outrageous declaration scandalised poor Konojo. Moreover, he felt that it would be doing his kind host Hasunuma a great injustice to be receiving his younger daughter at this hour of the night and make love to her. He expressed himself forcibly in these terms.

'If you will not love me as I love you, then I shall take my revenge,' said O Kei, 'by telling my father that you got me to come here by making love to me, and that you then insulted me.'

Poor Konojo! He was in a nice mess. What he feared most of all was that the girl would do as she said, that the samurai would believe her, and that he would be a disgraced and villainous person. He gave way, therefore, to the girl's request. Night after night she visited him, until nearly a month had passed. During this time Konojo had learned to love dearly the beautiful O Kei. Talking to her one evening, he said: 'My dearest O Kei, I do not like this secret love of ours. Is it not better that we go away? If I asked your father to give you to me in marriage he would refuse, because I was betrothed to your sister.'

'Yes,' answered O Kei: 'that is what, I also have been wishing. Let us leave this very night, and go to Ishinomaki, the place where (you have told me) lives a faithful servant of your late father's, called Kinzo.'

'Yes: Kinzo is his name, and Ishinomaki is the place. Let us start as soon as possible.'

Having thrust a few clothes into a bag, they started secretly and late that night, and duly arrived at their destination. Kinzo was delighted to receive them, and pleased to show how hospitable he could be to his late master's son and the beautiful lady.

They lived very happily for a year. Then one day O Kei said:

'I think we ought to return, to my parents now. If they were angry with us at first they will have got over the worst of it. We have never written. They must be getting anxious as to my fate as they grow older. Yes: we ought to go.'

Konojo agreed. Long had he felt the injustice he was doing Hasunuma.

Next day they found themselves back in Sendai, and Konojo could not help feeling a little nervous as he approached the samurai's house. They stopped at the outer gate, and O Kei said to Konojo, 'I think it will be better for you to go in and see my father and mother first. If they get very angry show them this golden pin.

Konojo stepped boldly up to the door, and asked for an interview with the samurai.

Before the servant had time to return, Konojo heard the old man shout, 'Konojo San! Why, of course! Bring the boy in at once,' and he himself came out to welcome him.

'My dear boy,' said the samurai, 'right glad am I to see you back again. I am sorry you did not find your life with us good enough. You might have said you were going. But there--I suppose you take after your father in these matters, and prefer to disappear mysteriously. You are welcome back, at all events.'

Konojo was astonished at this speech, and answered:

'But, sir, I have come to beg pardon for my sin.'

'What sin have you committed?' queried the samurai in great surprise, and drawing himself up, in a dignified manner.

Konojo then gave a full account of his love-affair with O Kei. From beginning to end he told it all, and as he proceeded the samurai showed signs of impatience.

'Do not joke, sir! My daughter O Kei San is not a subject for jokes and untruths. She has been as one dead for over a year--so ill that we have with difficulty forced gruel into her mouth. Moreover, she has spoken no word and shown no sign of life.'

'I am neither stating what is untrue nor joking,' said Konojo. 'If you but send outside, you will find O Kei in the palanquin, in which I left her.'

A servant was immediately sent to see, and returned,

stating that there was neither palanquin nor any one at the gate.

Konojo, seeing that the samurai was now beginning to look perplexed and angry, drew the golden pin from his clothes, saying:

'See! if you doubt me and think I am lying, here is the pin which O Kei told me to give you!'

'Bik-ku-ri-shi-ta-!' [*1] exclaimed O Kei's mother. 'How came this pin into your hands? I myself put it into Ko San's coffin just before it was closed.'

The samurai and Konojo stared at each other, and the mother at both. Neither knew what to think, or what to say or do. Imagine the general surprise when the sick O Kei walked into the room, having risen from her bed as if she had never been ill for a moment. She was the picture of health and beauty.

'How is this?' asked the samurai, almost shouting. 'How is it, O Kei, that you have come from your sickbed dressed and with your hair done and looking as if you had never known a moment of illness?'

'I am not O Kei, but the spirit of O Ko,' was the answer. 'I was most unfortunate in dying before the return of Konojo San, for had I lived until then I should have become quite well and been married to him. As it was, my spirit was unhappy. It took the form of my dear sister O Kei, and for a year has lived happily in her body with Konojo. It is appeased now, and about to take its real rest.'

'There is one condition, however, Konojo, which I must make,' said the girl, turning to him. 'You must

marry my sister O Kei. If you do this my spirit will rest truly in peace, and then O Kei will become well and strong. Will you promise to marry O Kei?'

The old samurai, his wife, and Konojo were all amazed at this. The appearance of the girl was that of O Kei; but the voice and manners were those of O Ko. Then, there was the golden hairpin as further proof. The mother knew it well. She had placed it in Ko's hair just before the tub coffin was closed. Nobody could undeceive her on that point.

'But,' said the samurai at last, 'O Ko has been dead and buried for more than a year now. That you should appear to us puzzles us all. Why should you trouble us so?'

'I have explained already,' resumed the girl. 'My spirit could not rest until it had lived with Konojo, whom it knew to be faithful. It has done this now, and is prepared to rest. My only desire is to see Konojo marry my sister.'

Hasunuma, his wife, and Konojo held a consultation. They were quite prepared that O Kei should marry, and Konojo did not object.

All things being settled, the ghost-girl held out her hand to Konojo saying:

'This is the last time you will touch the hand of O Ko. Farewell, my dear parents! Farewell to you all! I am about to pass away.'

Then she fainted away, and seemed dead, and remained thus for half an hour; while the others, overcome with the strange and weird things which they had seen and heard, sat round her, hardly uttering a word.

At the end of half an hour the body came to life, and standing up, said:

'Dear parents, have no more fear for me. I am perfectly well again; but I have no idea how I got down from my sick-room in this costume, or how it is that I feel so well.'

Several questions were put to her; but it was quite evident that O Kei knew nothing of what had happened--nothing of the spirit of O Ko San, or of the golden hairpin!

A week later she and Konojo were married, and the golden hairpin was given to a shrine at Shiogama, to which, until quite recently, crowds used to go and worship.


I hope you enjoy the story. Join me exactly a week after today for another interesting story. Please comment on this sotory and tell us the lessons derived. Thanks and bye