Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

To the Shirasagi Myojin Shrine—Kogata Senkichi looked up at the verdant forest crowning its summit and made to pay his respects, but the village elder who might have guided him showed no small reluctance.

This old man,

“Now, this old man shouldn’t be the one to say this, but my old woman ain’t no ordinary shrine maiden, no sir.”

In his youth, he had been a layabout among migratory companions, dabbling in hunting and petty gambling, but more than such things, it went without saying that the fact his old wife was a shrine maiden lent their words a certain authority.

Moreover, that the old shrine maiden’s shamanic training went far beyond ordinary practice would soon become clear to readers as well.

After all, this old man—whose name was Magohachi—was someone Senkichi had only just met by chance at the utterly desolate pagoda grounds of Sai-myo-ji Temple, an ancient structure along the old highway in Sekiya of Ōshū.
Then—though not abandoned, with its head priest away performing purification rites—he had been taken to that temple, and from the priests’ quarters made his way to pay respects at this hall of Juntei Kannon.

Now he sat before the sacred zushi altar upon barely two or three tattered tatami mats.

Through the weathered latticework—its closed front grille resembling sun-bleached ribs lashed together—Shirasagi Myojin’s forest enveloped a small hall’s roof across the valley. Between them stretched the highway and towering stone steps that appeared like some ink-wash tableau hung nearby—or rather, like a votive plaque daubed with hasty pigments.

"The deity manifests in female form"—so declared the old man—"but worship stays confined to yonder worship hall atop those steps." Even reaching that height demanded ritual purity and abstinence.
At mid-slope upon the great crag beyond stood an inner shrine housing Her secret image—too profound for casual veneration—so that pilgrimage there would prove futile... Such had been his dissuasive tone.

“This here’s a most hush-hush matter, y’see—about Shirasagi Myojin-sama’s true form.”

At that moment—though it felt irreverent—within the altar space of this crumbling hall sat Kannon’s form: green-haired with vermilion lips, carved from pale wood and robed in white within a cabinet whose single door hung ajar from missing hinges. Snowy deutzia flowers in a vase—who had offered them?—mingled with divine sleeves and skirts as Senkichi’s votive candles cast flickering shadows across the coffered ceiling—pale blue and gold like daylight moonbeams piercing through.

“Well now, they say She bears a striking resemblance to this Kannon-sama here, you see.”……

Only this Kannon’s visage was slightly slender-faced—like the gleam of jade—her hair black, her lips still a single stroke of crimson.

That Myojin wore a white heron moon crown.
Clad in white robes, with hakama said to be white or scarlet—though one might think them as indistinct as night-blooming flowers.…

In any case, since opening the inner sanctum’s door was impossible, one could only single-mindedly invoke Kannon and envision Her divine countenance there.

The old man tried in every way to prevent Senkichi from ascending to the hall on the peak—a place that seemed within arm’s reach yet as intangible as the painted world inside a votive tablet.

The most fearsome thing was the naginata hanging just below the coffered ceiling within Shirasagi Myojin’s Worship Hall—a single blade consecrated in some forgotten age.
Though no one had ever touched it or sharpened it, its edge spared neither owls diving into moonlit shadows nor wood pigeons calling on mild autumn days.
Mischievous field mice fell split clean in two; slithering snakes writhed as severed segments—even insects and beasts now cowered in fear, no longer daring to damage floors or ceilings.

Even humans could not escape unscathed if their hearts strayed.
There had once been reckless men—blinded by lust—who cast aside reason and brought a village girl into the worship hall at night, violating its ancient prohibition.
Though there were no curtains nor screens to separate them——

And what a moonlit night it was!
Shirasagi Myojin rustled Her wings as She watched the waning crescent moon settle over the forest during the twenty-third-night vigil—Her divine presence fueling their heedless chatter.
Fifteen years had passed since their transgression.
Past forty now, he had until then kept silent in private dread—but sneering “What curse? See here,” he jabbed at his nose: “What punishment could strike me?” Yet before his taunt faded, a blue light pierced through from above, cleaving the farmhouse wall—and when the willow-slender blade glinted in their eyes, blood sprayed from the dandy’s face. His severed nose—low and flat—twitched like a gecko upon the tatami before falling still.

Now, in towns and villages, there was an old dotard who went about hawking in a nasal drone—“Karma! Fresh crucian carp!”—and that was he.

While encounters between village youths at the hall might have seemed plausible, a tale like this was likely without parallel anywhere.

However, pressing further, the old man spoke—...the next fact startled Senkichi considerably, sending a chill through his chest.

It must have been too close to the village.
The location had since been moved.
But in former times, that Shirasagi Myojin’s forest had been—right there—a nest of white herons as if perpetual snow had fallen.
It was near the end of the Taishō era.
In a single night, two incidents occurred—two people met with terrifying abnormalities.

One was a scion of a prominent regional family—a man of local renown and authority who acted as he pleased.
A renowned avian researcher whom people hailed as the Ornithologist.
His house contained specimens more akin to a small museum than a bird shop, complete with live specimens.
Teachers from nearby prefectures and villages, students naturally, and enthusiasts—even from distant cities and provinces—came to visit in numbers rivaling those who flocked to view Sukagawa’s peonies.
Thus permitted by all quarters, this gentleman scholar alone could—regardless of hunting seasons or prohibitions—freely cock his prized hunting rifle with a *click* and take *dead-on* aim at living targets, all in academia’s name.

That year, it was said he had conceived an experiment on the egg-laying and growth conditions of the nest-bound white herons, rather than for prey.
……What must the chicks be like?
Unlike chickens or sparrows—merely hearing of mandarin ducks or white heron hatchlings—Senkichi, though largely indifferent to natural history, listened intently, his ears perking up at once.

In the village, there were no inns suitable for gentlemen to stay in. Taking lodgings in Katahara Town, the Ornithologist came and went at various times from summer to autumn. When his visits grew frequent—nearly daily journeys to Shirasagi Myojin’s forest—he still could not find the ideal nest he envisioned.

In the village, there were hunters.
Even calling them hunters, they were not seasoned professionals like those in Nanbu who pursued wild boars or in Shinshu who tracked bears.
These idlers—merely licensed for part-time hunting—when they grew desperate for game, would poach the forest’s white herons in utmost secrecy.
Since they feared being seen, they infiltrated with utmost stealth—or rather, their stubborn persistence was such that whether at dawn, dusk, or even after nightfall, on one night at summer’s end, as these very hunters wandered through the pitch-dark forest—resigned to claiming whatever resident birds they might find—a pale glowing entity, like a one-eyed mountain deity, came moving toward them, and they collided with it.
The light was indeed from the Ornithologist’s flashlight.
However, at that moment, the Ornithologist’s attire—cedar leaves bound around his head and waist, his face even tinged blue—made him appear like a forest demon, leaving the hunters gasping in astonishment.
According to the Ornithologist’s wisdom, the secret technique for approaching birds was said to be assimilating with trees according to the season and matching one’s attire in color nearly to that of the birds.

That is why, when the incident occurred one night in winter while snow was falling, the Ornithologist had made his hat, clothes, and even his shoes pure white—so the story goes.

(……?……)

Now, as for the Ornithologist and the hunters—though their respective work interfered with each other’s—since they encountered each other so frequently, whenever they met, they would naturally strike up a conversation.
“The heron princess here—well now—she’s damnably shy, isn’t she?
“Won’t show us where she gives birth, will she?”

“Sir—that’s blasphemy!”
“What do you think of hunters?”
As autumn deepened, he continued: “The ones till now were just migratory maidservants. When even attendants rise in station, they put on airs and withdraw deeper in.”
“Thus they retreat into the forest’s heart.”
“The nest I found this time is supreme.”
“When speaking of noble ladies among herons—their birthing happens amidst snow.”
“Hiding from prying eyes.”
“Their birth chambers lie in what’s called the inner palace.”
“Enough—the punishment will strike, I tell you.”
“Sir.”
“What do you think of hunters?”—Whether such herons truly existed—ones that bred in snow—remained unknown.
As the old man told it—needless to say, this hunter was himself.
Now when the hunter entered the forest through heavy snowfall at dawn, bootprints already crisscrossed the white-blanketed trunks and roots.
Damn it—has Sir come this early?
In the Ornithologist’s silent silverwood realm—observing a white heron noble lady in her final month—thud!
Such disturbance was strictly forbidden—to be caught staring would ruin everything.

Once they retreated to the ruined temple—Saimeiji had been unoccupied at the time—to its priests’ quarters, lit a fire in the hearth, ate their packed meals, and set out again, they plunged into the snow-laden forest. Gradually penetrating deeper, before long a stretch of blue water appeared ahead—a place called Ōnuma.

Now under clear skies, the trees encircling the marsh—their sleeves and hems embracing a great indigo mirror—appeared as though applying makeup, while thousands of white-robed figures standing around it seemed to circle a lapis lazuli hall, cross an emerald bridge, and dance upon the wind.

At this moment, there were neither worldly desires nor enlightenment.
Just as a heron blending into the snow brushed aside a cluster of silver reeds at the water’s edge with its shoulder—as if embodying the legend of warding off humans—and stood poised to stride forth gracefully, he—ah, ah, ah—of all days—happened to glance up and see a single black cloud suddenly billowing over the ridges of the Nasu mountain range—yet paid it no mind—and struck the offering tray with a metallic clang.
Gah!
—a young woman’s voice.
A soul-rending scream.

Had she crawled? Had she leapt? Had she slipped? When the hunter dizzily rushed over, crimson dripped—drip, drip, drip—onto the frost-hardened white snow. Where she had been shot, a beautiful woman with disheveled black hair lay sprawled on her back, her thrashing limbs frozen mid-convulsion.

Terror and astonishment beyond measure—a mere seven or eight meters away, the Ornithologist lay prone in his pure white helmet and a policeman’s summer uniform. “Help me—Sir, do you have any medicine?” he pleaded, clasping his hands as if salvation were at hand. But the Ornithologist—as if declaring, “*I* was the one who worked the magic to turn herons into young women”—maintained an air of ignorance, staring through his binoculars—wrapped in white cloth—at a branch of some tree with such intensity that he did not utter a word.

The hunter steeled himself for his end.……

Thereupon, he hurried back to his own home and dejectedly explained the situation to the old shrine maiden—his wife—who constantly admonished him against perpetual, needless killing: “Don’t do it—don’t you dare.” ……As he prepared to set out for that place, he hastily tightened his loincloth as if hanging it from a beam and—though he kept the azusa bow displayed as a sign without practicing his family trade while dwelling hidden in a thatched hut—it was said she was a master of divination and prayers in that art.
Somehow, skilled individuals not formally credentialed by schools transcended academic titles to become doctors.
The Doctor-Priestess would not be deterred by such trifles as her husband having committed murder and now trembling with pallid lips… In the dim winter storeroom, as the spinning wheel creaked… creaked… resonating like a village—nay, the entire world—wheezing with asthmatic cold, she clenched her gums and sternly commanded the hunter: Strip yourself bare.
Is she gonna make me change into a death shroud? Ain’t no such preparations here.
……Is she plannin’ to freeze me to death in the Ide River?
But when he obeyed her words, she told him to don the straw raincoat, remove that woolen stinking hat, and wear a sedge hat.
When he asked, “So—should I grab a bamboo staff or somethin’?” she—ignoring utility—spun her wheel faster and ordered: Run back to Shirasagi Myojin’s forest again. Whether Sir’s there or not—haul that young woman’s corpse here under your raincoat—press it skin-to-skin—and hurry straight back.

No—his courage utterly shattered from the moment he left the corpse’s side—the Nasu oroshi wind had turned pitch-black, and once again snow began to fall at dusk; by the time he set out this time, it had become a headwind blizzard.
Yet the hunter felt neither cold nor chill.
Amidst the tears and snowflakes whipped into a tomoe-swirl by the wind lashing his face, the naginata’s blade glinted ominously—would it slice off his nose and ears?
How many times he froze in his tracks……

My own hands—having shot the woman’s corpse with a rifle, having scraped away the snow and borne her against my bare skin—that state of mind defied all comparison: neither to the crimson lotus dais nor to the stake of the Eight Cold Hells.
Staggering back inside like a revenant through the howling blizzard, he found the Old Shrine Maiden seated on the kitchen’s straw mat, grinding her kitchen knife with rough strokes. In the storeroom hearth, flames licked a cracked pot—a sight more dreadful than Avīci or Tapana hells……“Now—untie your obi! Place the corpse on the chopping block—” she commanded, her voice neither stone nor bronze.
On the kitchen’s chopping block.
……The old woman’s visage resembled a painted Adachigahara demoness, yet around her neck she wore a long prayer bead necklace triple-wound with wolf fangs, fox eyes, and weasel feet—all while issuing commands.

...What a marvel—the corpse’s bluish waist and bloodied chest settled neatly onto the chopping block, its head alone drooping heavily toward the earthen floor. Her topknot—seldom done up properly—shattered like spilled charcoal from a burlap sack, black hair strewn across snow that had fallen like scattered petals. The Old Shrine Maiden rose sharply, glared, and commanded, “A woman like a heavenly nymph… Strip off that feathered robe—strip it clean!” Collar and sleeves were torn away—exposing white shoulders down to delicate underarms as she lay supine—knees drawn up to her chest as if bound, heels curled skyward in soft surrender. “Now—release those pale thighs glistening with fat.” “Beasts carry meat on their backs; birds bear it on their bellies—that’s nature’s way.” “Shall we cleave from the belly or flay from the spine?” She thrust the kitchen knife into Magohachi’s trembling hands—the hunter quaking with stifled sobs—and barked, “There!” As the Old Shrine Maiden yanked the woman’s legs downward like pulled mochi, the abdomen billowed softly, torso stretching limply outward.

“Before Kannon-sama, Master… Please forgive me.”

The enshrined Bodhisattva graciously flickered in the candlelight.

Dazedly, Senkichi listened—

The blood oozed thickly yet froze mid-flow; the large and small intestines, crimson liver, azure gallbladder, and five viscera swiftly unfurled—then came the command: “Sever the neck.”

Against the chopping block stretched that glistening throat—its fern-like veins and fiddlehead tendons quivering at a touch—a delicacy deemed fit for mountain rustics, or so they said. Yet even Magohachi, who in his youth had glimpsed the stylized ※（「参らせ候」のくずし字） of post-station courtesans, knew such comparisons fell hollow.

...The bluish veins resembling young spring leaves lay translucent beneath her skin, leaving him no place to set the blade.

The old woman grinned at this timorous fool with his comely face—this dithering dotard—and barked, “Hack off the nose—clean through.”

“Aye, mark this—you withered codger—murderers ne’er escape reckoning,” she thundered.—He clung desperately to life yet trembled at the thought of the naginata shearing his own nose away.

He bound an old cloth about his nose at the nape, then seized the beautiful corpse’s icy nose—slick as a fish—and sheared it off with one stroke—*ah*, the pain! As if a branding iron had pierced his palm, the agony blurred his vision—*haah*—and when he staggered back to his senses, he found himself clutching not flesh but a slender avian beak, while upon the block lay a single white heron with its belly laid open.

The mane feathers and breast down lay scattered; blood dripped across the chopping block, pooled at the heron’s neck, and smeared his own palm.

The Old Shrine Maiden adopted a domestic air and said briskly, “Once the heavy work’s done, I’ll mince it up myself.”
“Though I don’t know heron cookery—clear soup? Miso? Roast?” she added, poking the firewood and rattling the pot demonstratively. “Human daughters and heron wives—their grip on life’s no different.” At these words, he prostrated himself before the chopping block, bowed to the bird, crawled toward the crone, and pressed his palms to the ground.
“Cut it off, cut it clean—the hunting! Useless slaughter for sport—cut it off, I say!”

Across two or three fields, quite nearby—on the snow-covered night path along the front rice paddies—shadowy figures rustled past, their dimly flickering lights resembling a raccoon dog’s mockery of funeral rites. At their center, they bore a door plank—the procession rescuing the Ornithologist, frozen and insensate.

In the town hospital, he was afflicted for over two months; due to frostbite, two toes and part of his nose’s tip were torn off, sheared off, chipped off—or rather, what should one call it—ripped off, yes, ripped off.

He couldn’t comprehend it.
This defied all understanding.
The hunter who had shot the Messenger Princess with his rifle had merely been terrified yet emerged unscathed.
Yet Sir had been maimed.
“Merely observing the nest brought this curse”—he whispered inwardly as he sought answers from the old shrine maiden.
Thus did Shirasagi Myojin’s divine will decree: firearms were to be shunned.
Nor would her retainers escape harm—for the inner sanctum’s bedchamber had been violated, and worse still, the birthing chamber beyond the curtains’ deepest recesses—though not by her own hand—had been defiled… or so it was said.

In short, the goddess of the hall disliked research more than firearms.—

“Keep that resolve in all matters.”

“Of course—”

Yet there remained an air of concern and disapproval about letting Senkichi go to the worship hall alone.
This meant Old Man Magohachi intended to accompany him to the Shirasagi Myojin Shrine.
Even Senkichi—whose unease stemmed not merely from fear—faced a shrine shrouded in secrecy and strangeness, utterly devoid of visitors. When he thought of the naginata hung at its entrance, its hanging nails showed no signs of rust decay, nor could one be certain its supporting ropes remained intact.
Having company proved rather convenient nonetheless.

Now, as they circled around the temple kitchen along the old highway—stepped across the path overgrown with miscanthus in front of the temple—and began ascending the gentle slope beneath the stone steps—
The forest of Shirasagi Myojin—stretching across undulating mountain ridges and sloping gently toward Katahara Town’s outskirts they had traversed earlier—rose diagonally before them. At its edge towered blue miscanthus and broad bracken fronds, within which something flickered into view… How old might she be? A girl’s crimson obi abruptly resembled scarlet hakama trousers—a rare sight—but peering diagonally downward at the grassy embankment, two snail-like figures stood side by side, casting furrowed shadows in the midday sun…

“Grandpaaa!”

Her voice—wide and piercing—called out across the fields, resounding through the wilds.

The white-haired snail-like figure with a shell-like pointed tip

“Oh.”

“Hey, Gramps!”

“…Gramps—here—oh.”

“The Old Shrine Maiden says—hey—you’re to come back right away.”

“There’s no sake or rice cakes or… Ah…”

“How should I know?”

“They’re sayin’—hey—the guest and Shirasagi Myojin are gonna make a pilgrimage.”

“She says you’re to come back no matter what.”
“The Old Shrine Maiden says so, she does.”

Somehow, even Senkichi sensed a certain authority in that girl—no, in the one delivering the message.

“Well then, Master.”

The white-haired Snail parted abruptly from the straw-hatted Snail.

II

“So this is what they meant by ‘naginata’—the painting on this votive tablet—this?”

That old man.
He’d used his words to bring someone under the naginata’s blade.
Senkichi entered through the lattice door of the worship hall and, upon seeing the votive tablet hung on the broken transom to the right of the floor, exhaled through pursed lips and smiled.

However, though one might simply call it a votive tablet, there was meticulous coloring, lacquered maki-e designs, and even arabesque patterns.
Though the years it had weathered could not be determined, and the characters of its donor remained indistinguishable.
However, something like a ceremonial cloth bearing lacquered patterns—whether sha-ya silk or damask—was embroidered with deep purple in its crafted design.

A weapon it was, but not one that had passed through the hands of fierce warriors from schools like Nen-ryū or Ittō-ryū.
It must have been a woman’s offering—one bearing the gentle, serene name of a martial school.

His eyebrows relaxed, and his chest eased.
But until arriving here and pausing, Senkichi had in fact fixed his gaze, tightened his lips, and assumed a posture as if bracing for sudden rupture.
What made him most fearful was this: that even the slightest defiance of divine will would make a calm current flash forth and sever one’s nose—so it was said.

This was more fearsome than death itself. He recalled an old tale from before the Twenty-Third Night Gathering—of someone who had been afflicted with malignant syphilis and whose nose flew off when they sneezed while exiting the privy, scurrying across the floor by the hand-washing basin. It was said that when the nose flew off, they let out a shriek as a tongue emerged from the center of their face to chase after the detached nose. The Ornithologist’s case had been frostbite, he’d heard, but the result was no different.

If his nose were severed and a tongue protruded from the center of his face—he would never see Tokyo again. They likely wouldn’t let him board the first steam train.

While ascending the grassy slope past three in the afternoon—feeling somewhat hot—he adjusted his unlined kimono’s collar multiple times.

When leaving the temple, Senkichi removed his haori in Kannon’s worship hall and, dressed in his unlined kimono, carried a fan.
In this penitent state—penitent, penitent—he lacked both the strength to ascend mountains with a pilgrim’s staff and the grandeur of conquering peaks in mountaineering boots.
It resembled a shabby surrender to Shirasagi Myojin’s fortress of fresh foliage.
But proceeding with reverence proved the safer path.

The stone steps—partially collapsed here and there, though not steep enough to require a supporting rope—lay piled in countless layers, towering so high they seemed to pierce halfway into the summer clouds.

What struck him as unexpected here—given that he had heard this was an uninhabited realm where few ever paid their respects—was that while one might have feared snakes and expected weeds to have overgrown thickly to obscure the path, there lay a single line of paving stones leading smoothly to the front stairs, parting the grasses so effortlessly that one could count merely five or six fallen evergreen leaves upon them.

As he drew near, the water of the purification font was dry, yet recalling Mount Hakusan’s snowy peaks and his hometown’s tutelary deity, he conjured a phantom image of the princess enshrined within the hall.

Right beside that purification font, the branches of a massive enoki tree—so large it would take three men to embrace its trunk—grew thickly, enveloping the cypress bark-thatched roof in a verdant darkness so dense that merely glimpsing the katsuogi on the ridgepole left no doubt: this was the goddess’s abode.
The upraised roots—piled like black coral reefs, coiled blue-white beneath the floor’s edge as though shattering standing waves—supported the three-by-four ken worship hall atop them like a scaffolded stage resting on branches. In the chilling shade below, within the roots’ hollows, a spring could be seen welling up with water brimming like emerald pearls.

Senkichi purified his hands there.

As he ascended the stairs quietly—or rather, stealthily—what abruptly struck him was that the old man had been supposed to accompany him partway.
He had thought the door wouldn’t open if locked—yet though the lattice remained closed, its seams gaped slightly.
The dimness within likely came from the great tree’s dense foliage above.
Peering in up to his waist revealed the wooden veranda doors on all three sides each missing one or two latches.

He placed his hand on the door.

Inside, directly above, the naginata should be hanging.

As for what comical posture Senkichi struck there—well, that may well be left to the reader’s imagination.

“Please allow me through. Pardon the intrusion,” said Osei.

When he took hold of one of the doors and pulled, the floor too appeared clear blue and bright.

Having seen the votive tablet and paused, he now smiled at that sense of ease.

Without warning, his sleeve was struck, and a lightning flash shot forth.
A tapestry of wildflowers—balloon flowers, bush clovers, golden lace—flowed across the floor with the water, and at the same moment a woman’s obi aglow with silver threads stitched through dewdrops struck his eyes; Senkichi went flying through the air and was hurled down the stairs.
Flipping toward his hem once more was the tip of a long-handled naginata.
That lightning flashed once more, piercing through the cold sweat that fell like rain.

In the next instant, Senkichi’s body had almost instinctively taken the massive enoki tree’s trunk as a small shield.

He seemed more cicada than human—
the figure that darted beneath the shrine’s roof and fled to the tree.
——And after a short while, with only his pale face’s eyes peering out from behind the trunk, he resembled one all the more.

Having the willow’s shadow clinging to bare skin would be unseemly.
A similar pattern flowed smoothly over her shoulder drape, while around her waist lay only a pale pink decorative obi.
The floral-patterned obi now cast faint shadows through the black latticework, its ends fluttering as the woman—her pale neck and legs translucent beneath black hair turned away—lightly adjusted her kimono’s slipping hem. With her pale crimson underrobe nearly vanishing against white shins, she swayed delicately while circling all three sides of the worship hall’s veranda, still facing away: gliding smoothly forward, stumbling back, pacing to and fro.
Even amidst her disheveled state and flustered movements, her allure—perceived through the enoki roots’ grandeur that alternately concealed and revealed her form—evoked instead the image of dayflower root threads trembling and tangling delicately as she traversed the veranda.
Yet remaining with her back turned, she soon pressed her forehead firmly against the lattice of the half-opened door and stood motionless; her slender shoulders heaved with labored breaths.
Hair swayed softly like a rustling wig.
As she stood there struggling to steady her disordered hem, the slender pale tips of her light white tabi socks—resembling bird feathers—trembled; the naginata, its handle held aloft as she leaned half against the door and clung halfway to it, tilted precariously… its blade tip poised to slice her toes.

The battle—Senkichi seemed to have won.
In any war chronicle or military record, the one who holds the naginata inverted stands defeated.
At the same time, the blade tip gouged flesh, fresh blood threatening to spill down and stain the heel—a perilous sight to behold.

A blue cicada let out a voice like a discordant chirr—

"You—you! Whoever you are, whatever you do—it’s dangerous! That’s dangerous."
"You’ll get hurt."
"You’ll get hurt."
"You must take care—"

With parted hair revealing a pale cheek and wrist pressed ever firmer against the door,

“Ahh.”

With a gentle, youthful sigh—so innocent it hardly required response—she drew a deep breath,

“Mr. Kogata—”

Her voice was clear, pure, and slightly hoarse—a thin sound.
At this, Senkichi lost his hold on the trunk and nearly fell as his hands slipped free.
What reached him seemed not the woman on the veranda, but a phantom bird calling from the massive enoki’s upper branches.

“...Mr. Kogata—are you truly Mr. Kogata?”

Though her voice now seemed drained of vigor, it remained clear and distinct.

In summer, bamboo blinds; in winter, sliding doors—the space beyond the partition felt all the more intimately nostalgic when thinking of someone. ……Having heard this much, that very fact made the abruptness of the longing unbearably intense.
——

He had not yet fully returned to being human.
The cicada trembling before the naginata replied in a slightly quavering voice,

"I am Kogata—Kogata Senkichi in the flesh. It’s me——I’m right here. ……Miss Osei of Tsukiji—Tsukiji in Tokyo—no—rather—you—are you truly the real Miss Osei?"

“Yes, I am Osei—Osei, it’s me—the very end of Osei.”

“Ah, dangerous!”

The naginata fell onto the rotting edge.
Upon the flat of its blade lay what seemed a palm of snow; it crumbled feebly away as she covered her face with one sleeve and wept.
The end of one’s existence… The end of existence.
Thus, to those who witnessed this scene—whether she appeared as a castle princess, a beautiful lady-in-waiting (undoubtedly from a defeated army), or a fugitive wandering the crossroads shrine—there lingered an air of shadowy profundity and darkly alluring beauty that bore no resemblance to anything in the nearby mortal world.

That was another matter entirely.
This was not the occasion to mention it.
She had been an apprentice at Umisui, a restaurant in Tsukiji, and the establishment had thrived because of this beauty.
She had been Senkichi’s lover since long ago.
Of course, he had neither won her affection nor even managed to convey his feelings when, last summer, Umisui opened a seasonal branch at the foot of Mount Fuji for the summer months; he had merely learned that Osei had been put in charge of the shop as part of her summer retreat. Until this moment, he had known nothing of her whereabouts since then.…

Had that summer branch been in Nikko or Karuizawa, there might have been some connection to the coming and going of clouds.
Here was a remote village situated five or six ri beyond Sekiya, through mountain paths and winding country roads.
——

——In truth, earlier at Nishōmiji temple’s priest’s quarters at the mountain’s base, Senkichi had seen a woman’s paper pouch laid beneath a large wooden fish on a shelf; then, before Juntei Kannon’s sacred altar—where red-and-white pregnancy sashes were placed on a ceremonial tray for the bodhisattva’s child-blessing rites—he had spotted the silver-dusted edge of a forgotten purple woman’s folding fan marked with “Sei.” Even when this sent a shiver through him, he had merely conjured a distant memory of her face.

Instead, regarding the paper pouch crushed beneath the wooden fish, he had feared desecration of an ancient temple involving a beauty; concerning the woman’s folding fan on the ceremonial tray, he had anxiously questioned the old man separately about the pregnant woman’s fate. Yet the old man seemed loath to even touch upon the implications of those two colored items, turning his ears away and evading his lips—thus Senkichi had remained silent about the matter.

However, unable to dismiss those two items as mere trifles—and as a token of his resolve to return and revisit them—he had removed his haori and left it at the temple. This alone—he would add.

In any case, to meet Osei there… It was beyond metaphor… A makeshift comparison would be like seeing Lake Tazawa in Hakone.

III

“―This is too strange―too strange! If you’re truly Miss Osei―the real Miss Osei―show me your face! Turn… turn this way―”

From his precarious perch on the tree branch, Kogata felt an uncanny eeriness at the tone of his own voice that had emerged unbidden.

In fragments,

“I’m so ashamed I can’t even face you.”

Her voice broke into a sob, growing hoarse as she bit her quivering lips—yet surely there was no actual deformity marring the face she called “ashamed.” Even if one were to brandish a naginata and attempt to cut down an adversary, this woman’s stance—turned away from the foe, frantically dashing along the hall’s edge without so much as glancing back, her chest and abdomen seemingly concealed by her sleeves—would alone suffice for readers following this tale’s progression to nod in prior understanding: she was with child.

“I will go there—is that all right?”
“This time, I will employ martial arts here.”
“If I start from the base of this tall tree—since it’s just barely within reach—I should be able to leap to the railing.”

The woman clung to the lattice and stood up again.
She remains facing away.

“But won’t you do something about that naginata?”
“It’s truly, really dangerous.”

“I will come over there now.”

The composed quietness of his speech distantly recalled how he would admonish customers at Umisui in Tsukiji, and Senkichi smiled wryly to himself.
Immediately descending from the enoki tree’s roots into the grass, he obediently waited in reserve.

Amidst the branches, something fluttered and writhed... To liken it thus would evoke a serpentine form—an ill comparison indeed.
Her slender figure—pulling up the pale kimono hem, adjusting the waist sash, tightening her *date-maki* obi while repeatedly smoothing her collar—appeared through gaps in the foliage beyond, the ceremonial medicine ball seeming to vanish past the bamboo blinds.

Eventually, she turned to face forward and came down the steps.
The sleeves she had pulled together were so full that light spilled through their open underarms—plump and slightly rounded.

She had the air of a white heron holding peonies.

He would not look.

“I will drink water.”
“Mr. Kogata… I… I’m out of breath.”

And then, immediately at the enoki tree’s root spring, she deftly clamped the hem of her kimono between her knees and, without bowing her head, inserted her exposed upper arms into the water with ordinary composure.
In the shade of the enoki leaves, flowing through the blue veins of her hand and seeming poised to reach her throat—but when she tried to scoop it up, her palm proved too shallow; like beads of a rosary, the droplets scattered and spilled over.

“Use both palms—both palms… It’s Shirasagi Myojin’s water.”
“You don’t need to put on airs or anything for some guy.”

“Yes, no.”

She pressed down the sleeve she had begun to fold onto her lap to conceal her chest, still covering her abdomen with that one hand she would not release.

"But I have to thrust both palms in, don’t I?"

"Yes, there’s that ladle over there."

“Ladle.”

At the purification basin.

“Ah, it’s close at hand.
I’ll get it for you.
It’s blue moss, but it’s dry—perfectly safe. Here.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kogata. I did know, but I ended up taking it.”

“By the way… Wait a moment. Is this water safe to drink, I wonder?”

“Yes, it’s cold. Delicious. I drink it nearly every day.”

“In that case, you come to this shrine every day...”

“Ah...”

With a breath that seemed to vanish,

“Delicious... Ah, so delicious.”

Her lips too appeared blue-clear.

“I’m envious.”
“When you’ve finished drinking, please lend it over here.”
“I will.”

And so, he was gazing at the handle she had wiped with her handkerchief.

“What’s wrong?”

“Because my hair is like this, it won’t do if any strands fall.”

“Please fill it generously.”
“Blessed—this is cold.”
“If I drink it all at once, my tongue shrivels up, you know.”

He gulped it down,

“The nectar seeps into my very innards.”

he said serenely.

While Osei was looking sidelong at the profile of Kogata’s face with its straight nose bridge that ran smoothly,

“Oh, how beautiful you are!”

“Water?… Of course!”

“No, you are.”

“You are.”

“When you were looking at the ema earlier, I thought you looked beautiful too—but the way you drank the sacred water in one breath, that…”

“No—rather, that’s a bit different. Between billowing black smoke from frying beef in butter and blowing the breath of rotten barrel persimmons versus drawing Shirasagi Myojin’s sacred water and inhaling the pine wind—there must be some difference.”

And, for the first time, he let out a soft laugh.

“What’s truly crystal-clear is you.”

“Yes.”

While innocently accepting the compliment, he slightly furrowed his brows.
A sleeve covered below her breast.

“Once I took a relative’s daughter—about twenty years old—on a pilgrimage to Kishimojin. Under the lamplight in that silent hall, where paulownia blossoms scattered at the windows, the elegance of her collar hem—even her closed eyes as she prayed were austerely… Her pallor outshone even face powder. Earlier too, before Kannon’s statue at the mountain temple… Miss Osei—I saw a woman’s pale lavender fan.”
“Ah, when you came here to worship, I thought how beautiful your figure must have looked in prayer.”

Osei looked down.

That collar hem went without saying.

“I understood that person as well.”
“Now I also understood that the same person had secluded themselves at this shrine.”
“But wait—”
“When I was looking at the ema, where were you, Miss Osei…”

“Well, and… what do you mean to say I did?”

He abruptly drew near and, with the hand that had brushed off the handkerchief, grasped the middle of the dipper’s handle.
Still holding its midpoint, Kogata changed his position and sat down on the elevated root of a tree.

“I’ll tell you—I... but you... you, why did you come here...”

“Your question is most reasonable. —Though it may seem somewhat affected, I conceived an uncharacteristic whim to visit Matsushima… This is the return journey. —Visiting ancestral graves sounds dutiful, but had that been my true purpose, I should have done it on the way there.”

“When I reached Sekiya, I suddenly recalled this temple in Katahara’s village—Saimeiji Temple.”

“I remembered hearing from my grandfather and grandmother as a child that our ancestral graves were there.”

“It feels irreverent to say, but they’re people whose names I barely know.”

The graves were all buried in grass and indistinguishable; with the family having wandered off to distant provinces and become practically disconnected, the temple too had fallen into ruin.
The priest was away—he couldn't examine the death register—and while waiting for him to return to the temple... but that wasn't all.

On the way from Katahara town to the temple, along the Tahatsunawate path, the signboard of a lunch spot—its roof and eaves entirely collapsed into decay—lay crushed, while before a clear little stream, an unexpected crimson peony…

Osei smoothed back her stray locks and raised her face.

“In the shadow of those flowers, at the water’s edge, a white heron was perched. It plucked up a cantharides—a deadly poisonous insect that kills people—and flew into this forest’s sky.”

“Even before that—before that incident, I tell you. On our way to Katahara, along a forest path—midway through—suddenly and forcibly barging into the automobile I had hired was an unpleasant man with an ominous-looking face wearing red attire—a red helmet cap and red robes—accompanied by four boys in matching red shirts and carrying hunting rifles.”

“In some arbitrary spot, they went into the bushes at the mountain’s base and disappeared—given that this mountain range continues, and considering the direction the white heron flew, it must be around this shrine area.”

“They say if you go far back—Lake Onuma, perhaps?”

“In one way or another—though it’s a dreamlike tale—I felt as though a battle between gods and demons might break out there.”

As he spoke，Kogata Senkichi was startled to see how Osei’s pitifully lowered eyes—now filled with indignation，resolute，their frustration tightening them into an even bluer hue—had transformed．He remembered—…The demon was not unconnected to Osei’s plight．

“I’ll explain…Mr．Kogata…I’ll explain，but if—out of shame and frustration—my breath catches and my voice fails…then there’s no need for you to lay a hand on someone like me…on such a body as mine．”
“Please simply let go of this dipper’s handle．”
“Just keep leaning forward…into the human blue moss…”

“No—I won’t let go of this dipper’s handle that we’re both holding like this.”

“If that kind heart of yours is genuine… then please give me water to revive me… I… I did say you were… beautiful, didn’t I?”

“I’ve forgotten—and I don’t wish to hear such jesting.”

“No—it isn’t jesting, but… Right now, I—I will slash open this stomach with that naginata, spilling out liver and entrails…”

The pale blue obi patterned with wildflowers lay disheveled at the threshold beneath the latticed shutters, visibly trembling beyond alongside Osei’s back.
The hackberry’s crown rustled noisily as a sudden gust swept through.

“—And there your figure descended as though from the very clouds…”

“What—you mean I merely tumbled down?”

“Then you appeared at the head of the stone steps.”
“As if knowing none would come—yet here you are—I had asked that shrewd old man of these parts to keep visitors away these past few days!”
“How unexpected—that the pilgrim would be you.”
“When I peered intently through the lattice—there you stood—Mr. Kogata—so near this water your shadow nearly touched it—it was truly you.”

He had also met that old man.
Senkichi nodded repeatedly to himself.

“In a place like this… such a place, here in the mountains of Oshu.”

“Likewise.”

“I hurriedly fled the Worship Hall to the far corner.”
“Straight ahead were the staircase and stone steps leading to the inner sanctum.”
“…The space between is densely overgrown with trees and grass.”
“I hid under those stairs and looked closely again.”
“Not an inch of difference—Mr. Kogata from Tokyo—your beauty only makes you more suspicious—no, not just suspicious, but utterly terrifying.—A monster came—it transformed and came—damn it, it’s here again!”
“A monster! …I thought.”

“…………”

“Because that monster has been subjecting me to one vexing ordeal after another—vexing, utterly vexing...”

—Damn you—

“...” she managed, voice catching.

“Ah, I see—a single swift strike… The naginata, then.”

“It is Shirasagi Myojin’s sacred property.”
“Even so, I was the one who took hold of it. I didn’t think it could strike or cut—damn it—but I thought I’d knock it down.”

“If it’s about being cut, that’s still maiming.”
“If you’re cut down by it, you’ll be split clean in two. Dangerous, dangerous.”

And now he laughed.

"Please forgive me—for thinking you a monster, I am a presumptuous beast, a brute, a dog; consider that you've been bitten by a dog."

“What nonsense… That’s absurd. If being bitten by a dog is what it takes, I’d rather be struck by Miss Osei’s naginata. Since I’m not even grazed by a scratch, I’m not speaking with magnanimous ease—but I feel neither anger nor resentment. Please speak calmly and without reserve. You’re not quite yourself—calm yourself. …This might be the touch of a monster, you know.”

There, as he placed his hand on her back, her disheveled hair brushed against him—cold as ice.

“Please make sure that naginata doesn’t fly.”

Her black hair was cold as a lacquered blade.

The dipper that had slipped into the water clanged.

IV

“...Mr. Kogata—a woman, through her own shortcomings as a woman, wishes to revive a fallen house—to build a house—”

“Revive a fallen house… build a house…”

“Yes, is this idea mistaken?”

“What could be mistaken? Who said it was a mistake? Outrageous—it’s splendid!”

“My father was from this land.”

“Ah, I see.”

“—He was apparently a minor samurai of this domain, but I believe he was something of a pleasure-seeker. It was well that he gave up wearing his sword during the turmoil of the Meiji Restoration—but being such a man, he could not settle into honest work. Still… as the highway was bustling then, they say he opened a teahouse inn on the outskirts of Katahara town.”

“…You—on your way here—those… those peonies… the peonies.”

For some reason, as she drew a breath, her voice grew hoarse.

“That place where they are blooming—though now it has become like a rice paddy—was originally a detached garden, they say… and then——”

“The peonies were something my father cultivated with his own hands, they say… Later, focusing solely on cuisine, it came to be called Botan-tei.”
“When my father passed away… it passed from hand to hand, until in the end it became no different from a rotten stump.”
“But even that—due to the economic downturn and with no one to take over the failed business—collapsed in a storm and now lies by the roadside like the skeleton of a house.”

“My mother was the proprietress around the time of Botan-tei.
…I don’t need to mention such things, but she was much younger than my father.”

“—She was a geisha from around town, they say.
But was it because she was a samurai’s daughter—when I was still in her womb…”

Her ears were faintly tinged with color.

“While I was in her womb, she relied on a distant relative in Honjo, Tokyo, to leave that place, and later worked as a geisha again in Asakusa—but when she passed away, until her final moments, she left a will pleading, ‘The Tazawa house—the Tazawa house—at least do not let its lineage die out.’”

“At that time, I was working as a hostess in Shinbashi.”
“With the mindset of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old—whether relying on others’ help or trying to run a business alone—I couldn’t see any hope of establishing a household.”
“So I arranged my circumstances, changed my path, and entered service at Baishui.”
“It’s shameful to say this so bluntly myself—but rather than depending on my hairstyle or appearance, I resolved and prayed fervently to save even a little money so I could open a small shop, and then find an upstanding person to become an adopted heir if fate allowed.”

“Even with such modest means, if I endured over ten years in a single household, there were one or two who approached me with proposals—but becoming the Tazawa house’s adopted heir was a connection far removed.”
“With a cold face, I refused outright.”
“That was a miscalculation—it was wrong. Don’t you agree?”

“It is not a mistake.”
“Miss Osei—if the path were but a single straight road, reviving a household—preserving its lineage—would be a truly noble resolve. But for a woman alone… how does one proceed? Even scholars, educators, or temple priests—when faced with reality—find the crossroads ahead branching into eight paths, making it difficult to show the way… Such has the world become.”

“Indeed it has.”
“But even so, the days stretched long… I hadn’t thought it a matter of yesterday or today—but last year, due to business at the shop, I spent a summer in the foothills, and each morning and evening when gazing upon Mount Fuji… I found myself longing to take a leisurely journey alone.”
“Though I’m quite the homebody by nature—thanks to their kindness, what with the shop being so busy—my uncle and aunt in Honjo became much like foster parents to whom my mother had turned.”
“Having no particular destination in mind, I thought that if I were to travel, it might as well be to Katahara—a place that stirred nostalgia merely from hearing its name—and so I set out during October’s Indian summer, when the maples were said to be in full glory…”

“For the first time, I stayed at a traveler’s inn in that town—whether by chance or some karmic connection—and the retired couple running that inn knew much about the past. Perhaps out of curiosity, they said that just having ‘Tazawa’ in the guest register already suggested some slight connection to Katahara. So they guided me around and even showed me my father’s grave at Saimyōji Temple... Truly mysterious—the peonies by the roadside, which had long vanished into the undergrowth, sprouted buds last year, and somehow this summer bore flowers. In town, many people came to see them—those who drank from the stream below and became intoxicated would draw up its waters and praise it as perfume... ‘The young lady’... they meant me.”

Her cheeks appeared cold and forlorn,

"Upon returning to my hometown to revive the Tazawa house—now that the auspicious omen had revealed itself—they wouldn't even let me settle before tending to everything with such earnest care. 'Peony this, Peony that'—my room became the Peony Chamber."

"Sweet bean paste would've been too garish—I thought to apply yellow face powder instead. I became Botan-tei Kinako."

"'Would you care for another...?' Uttering such phrases, I sometimes found myself serving drinks to customers."

"To relieve the tedium of an extended stay—a practiced recklessness I'd grown accustomed to..."

Her sighs grew feeble,

“If I were to speak of the most troublesome thing, I would rise from that spot and return to the Peony Room.”
“It was all this and that—about the business, about the household—from one thing to another.”
“There were the retired couple, the master and mistress, and the household members—amounting to four in total.”
“The clerk, the maid—they take turns consulting with me.”
“Just listening brought me joy—stacking, dismantling, cutting and assembling, even estimating the garden’s back door—and as I busied myself like a child with building blocks, the days passed by.”
"...passing through torii gates, and unless I saw the kadomatsu pine decorations, I couldn’t call it my hometown—so feeling just as the saying goes, I would visit the shrine."
...During my stay, how many times did I stand before those peonies?

A single pillar—even the floor joists—still bore traces where my parents’ hands had touched them.
_I should retrieve those bones._
_What should I do?_
_Should I burn them? Bury them?_
Even if I built a modest nine-by-two ken structure, the current rice fields rendered the location entirely unsuitable.
“You should build a shrine to Jizō-sama,” the retired couple advised.
_Ah yes—that would do. Let’s proceed._

Even remembering made the body tremble—…

It was the beginning of February this year.
...I heard Tokyo was the same, but even around here, it was an unusually warm winter with little snow.... Once tonight's bean-throwing was done, they'd mark the year's turning in Katahara, and with the baby turning two, even the retired couple laughed.
That evening—at dusk...

In the pleasant afterglow of her bath, the snowflakes fluttering down filled her with delight—cheekily so—...and yet, even in Ginza or those Tsukiji late-night corners, she had no memory of enduring trivial pranks; even when encountering mischief, she knew those gates all too well from her long-ago familiarity.
"...It's something from Baishui."
"So I would usually exchange greetings and then leave—completely unaware of the path's terrors. And since I had companions when going as far as the Botan-tei ruins—or even when going back and forth alone several times—the roof-less long corridor felt no different. I didn't even wear a coat—just a single yukata with a collar, Mr. Kogata."
"The water flowing into [my] hem—that stream too, while at Baishui—I could hear the rhythm of water in the back room."
"...The peonies were now nothing but branches, withered at that, yet the falling snow settled neatly into white buds."
"...The large blooms too seemed to appear as vestiges."

If someone were to build a small Jizō-sama shrine over there, with ivy crests on the lanterns, and if an adopted child could be secured—having those two things would bring joy.
How mortifying… While I’d deliberately placed an offering box—no, wait, that jeweled orb… no, it was Inari-sama—all the while thinking such things, there had been times when I’d dance like this, holding an umbrella and fluttering about as a maiden of wisteria blossoms or perhaps a heron.
—I found myself carelessly forgetting whether I had folded the umbrella there or opened it.
With terrible force, she yanked the umbrella upward.
“In heaven and on earth, Mr. Kogata—aside from Honored Kannon and Honored Myojin—with this woman’s body… to put into words—”

She gnashed her teeth with a grinding sound, and her eyelids abruptly paled.

“A fit?
“Pull yourself together, Miss Osei.”

Quickly scooping the ladle’s water, she took it into her mouth as if shaving.

“Pretentious human-like spasms—they’ve already passed through.”
“Ah, if only this water would turn into blue smoke exactly as it is and burn away.”

For a while, even their voices ceased.

“How infuriating! When I saw that thing grab me from behind as my legs floated upward, Mr. Kogata.”

Because she trembled violently, Kogata removed the hand he had placed on her shoulder.
As she sank down as if about to collapse, she threw out the hem of her kimono and slid one hand across the moss.

“Hair like lye covered everything.”
“A tall, dead tree-like spine—a blue-faced ※（けものへん＋非）々, that ※（けものへん＋非）々 from the paintings—its nose, towering and enormous, loomed over me like black clouds… and then I lost all awareness.”

Later—when she regained consciousness, it was at the hearth of an old woman and old man who sold candy in a solitary house.
There was a heavy thud at the back door—and that was all, they said.

“In what shape had I been thrown out?”

She adjusted the hem of her kimono and straightened her posture,

“...Later, at an inn’s kitchen in Ōnuma, when I suddenly caught sight of a white goose lying belly-up on a cutting board—said to have been caught there—a shudder ran through me again, and I convulsed and collapsed.”

That evening, she returned by rickshaw from the old man’s house—a mere four or five blocks away.
Suddenly complaining of a terrible chill, she covered herself and lay down—how could she even lift her face from the pillow?
It was beyond mere chills—her body burned as if aflame, yet cold sweat poured out.
“The sweat—under my arms, at my breasts—oozed thickly, reeking like a shark or ray left to rot in June’s swelter.”
“I wanted to tear it out, cut it away, scrape it off—my whole body heaved with nausea, and I couldn’t stop vomiting.”

“They forced medicine down my throat—what kind drug was it?—yet this life inside me wouldn’t die out.”
“It’s not about whether it’s alive… I simply go to cling to Kannon-sama at Saimeiji Temple.”
“Even then—the feeling when I glimpse the peonies along the way—I leave entirely to your understanding.”
“…To think ‘What sin could I have committed?’—that’s just my own selfishness… if seen through the eyes of the gods and buddhas.”

“Miss Osei……”

He interrupted in a lowered voice.

“In the eyes of gods and buddhas, there is no fault, no sin.
“It is precisely humans like you that demons target.”
“The peony flowers bloomed after how many years of decay… That cannot be a lie.”
“People may see it as an auspicious omen, but it might have been bloomed by a demon.”
“Conversely, even if we grant that an auspicious omen appeared when Miss Osei returned to her hometown, the fact remains that there is something remarkable in her family’s ancestral remains enshrining a Jizō statue.”
“Merit, reverence, good deeds, noble acts—it is the role of demons to target the very heart of these.”
“Either way, it’s dreadful. Let’s pass through there quickly.”
“Now, you too must close your eyes and come before Honored Kannon.”

“―There was a time when the priest said he wanted me to donate some red and white cloth to the temple.”
“It’s not for the temple’s own use―though it’s for the alms of the people―this poor temple just as it is. …Well, if I can be of any help from my side, I would even wish to make a request.”
“If I bring three bolts [of cloth], [they] want to cut them into six-foot lengths each, but there are no scissors… How about using a kitchen knife?”
“Well, tearing it by hand should suffice.”
“When I helped the priest stack them on the *sanpō* trays―up until then, I had been unfaithful and knew nothing.”
“When I heard the reason for the May sash from Honored Kannon, who bestows the loving kindness of child-rearing―given the time and occasion―…Honored Kannon.”

Osei, her long hair flowing, stood erect and pressed her white hands together at the base.

“In a moment of feminine impulse—having stacked the red cloth on top—I secretly took the uppermost one.”

“That is auspicious—isn’t that splendid, Miss Osei.”

Osei rested against the enoki tree’s protruding roots this time, while Kogata settled into a lower spot, stretching one leg forward in a relaxed posture.

“It was the night of Setsubun.”
“Consider your opponent a demon.”
“But if that seems too unrestrained, think of it as an injury… or illness.”
“Injuries and illnesses happen to everyone.”
“……Even if those injuries pose no hindrance—well, suppose a baby was conceived, pardon me.”
“Since ancient times, miracles have accompanied great people—observing sun, moon, stars—or rather, it’s begun to resemble street divination, hasn’t it?”

He opened his sleeve and fanned himself.
The willow’s shadow seemed about to fall; having found the right approach, he appeared to see some merit in it.

“There are countless precedents of conception through crane sightings.”
“Consider it what they call a prayer child.”
“Moreover, if you were to raise it alone without some meddlesome father voicing opinions, wouldn’t that preserve the unadulterated Tazawa lineage?”
“Ah, my mention of demons was misguided—this snow they speak of in bountiful years often falls around Setsubun.”
“At spring’s very threshold—with auspicious snow upon peonies and Jizō Bodhisattva’s blessings—surely you’ve received a divine gift. Yes, that must be it—Miss Osei.”

Osei’s eyelids were faintly tinted again.

“I don’t have such… such grand aspirations, but I thought it might be a girl.”
“After five days, seven days, two nights, three nights of sitting quietly before Kannon-sama—now that I think of it, these days there are no tengu or hihi about, and above all, no stench of beasts.”
“It’s a sense of decay—or perhaps I feel akin to something dwelling in water, and when the forest’s fragrance mingles with the pine winds that occasionally sweep down from the peaks, I wonder if I’ve been possessed by a water deity or a mountain god.”
“Ah, karma and karmic deeds.”
“Even if it’s deformed—even an insect would be fine.”
“Even a kite or crow, a crucian carp or loach—it doesn’t matter.”
“If I were to take that child and wander the provinces as a mendicant nun, becoming a parent-child spectacle—so be it. Then… my mind grew calmer.”

“Ah, the mercies of Kannon.”

When she abruptly turned her face away and slumped her shoulders, Osei let her tears stream down.

“I wish I could have simply received those mercies from you, Mr. Kogata—but there’s been a bird scholar—a doctor—around Sekiya since long ago.”

“…………”

“To approach the birds’ nests—to shoot them—they use all sorts of… shapes and guises.”
“…putting tree branches on their heads, winding vines and dead leaves around their waists… Then Magohachi—that candy-seller old man—casually mentioned in his nighttime stories… just a word…”

(—…………)

“I felt as though fire tongs had been thrust into my armpit.”
“I tried to tear up the fan and discard it—but thinking it wasteful, like casting it at Honored Kannon—my hand went numb and I nearly dropped it.”
“Should I leap into the valley at midnight and sink my teeth into Tazawa’s grave?” My teeth clattered.
……Should I douse the roadside collapsed house with kerosene and burn it down?
Should I squeeze poison into the peony roots and dry up that stream completely?

But now… Before Kannon-sama, who in her great mercy and compassion protects this maternity sash, I became so vexed, so unbearably frustrated that I could no longer endure it.
With evil thoughts and wicked intentions, my liver and soul leap up… Ah, before the gods—before Myojin-sama, whose divine wrath cuts sharp—day before yesterday, yesterday, today…

Osei alone in this hall—

The more I stayed alone—the lonelier I was—the more my blood stirred and my flesh trembled, each breath I drew stinging as if a thousand needles pierced my entire body.—Just moments ago, within the votive tablet, I saw something horrifying: a white woman’s naked form bound face-up in Adachigahara’s solitary hut, her swollen belly being split open.

(—In truth, that votive tablet was not as it had seemed—)

“Ah, how liberated she must feel.”
When I envied that woman, the movements within my abdomen transformed from mere stirrings—they slithered like crawling things, murmured like speech, heaved with rasping breaths from a gigantic nose that licked and thrust out a sallow face—damn it!—there I lay unconscious by peony roots, life and death unknown, now feeling an earth spider spread its black legs and writhe within my belly.

I untied the sash and threw it.

No—it wasn’t that I forgave the man.

I exposed my abdomen.

With a burst of fragrance—the scent of musk—I untied the brocade bag and pressed the cold flat side of the naginata beneath my breast. Again came the fragrance—clove-scented—and then…

When returning this naginata to its original nageshi beam, two people were needed—that much made sense—but since Osei had been the one gripping the blade side, it felt unnatural.

No one would imagine that here—in this place—someone might slice open their belly with a naginata, or make another do so.

Moreover—it must have been dropped when they removed this. The woman’s long cut hair—when had it been stored away?—lay fallen, bound with a paper cord and fastened with a black ceremonial string. Even looking at it was eerie; they quietly rehung it. Osei was admirable! ……She settled into calmness. Instead, when she returned to being a calm woman, it took a bit of time to tend to her appearance. Undergarment—untied from her waistband, she began retying it. She sat down on the floor……

It was merely a faint tickling sensation.
The comings and goings of men in such moments defy proper imagining unless rendered in caricature.
Kogata examined each votive tablet one by one.
Beginning with the naginata, then—
——

He cast a sidelong glance once—at that instant, she was using the loop of her Hanano obi, torn off in her frenzy, to secure the trailing hem of the discarded single-layer robe, raising one knee adorned with autumn grasses whose kicked-out hems shimmered in phantom twilight, leaning against it to bare her shin as she smoothed stray hairs, licking her fingertips—then abruptly averted his gaze as if witnessing something profane.

“It’s that votive tablet, Mr. Kogata.”

Whether rising, sitting, or even sitting back-to-back, within the narrow hall's single space, their energies intermingled.
Adachigahara's...

"Miss Osei, it's just your imagination.
This votive tablet doesn't show a naked woman's body bound to a chopping block.
It's a white heron laid face-up.
And look—the one cooking isn't some terrifying demon hag, but a dim-witted old man with an octopus-like pointed mouth.
Don't be ridiculous—this isn't for making wishes, but a tablet warning against killing."

He had grasped the circumstances.
While half-absentmindedly speaking, Kogata again looked at the next votive tablet.

Peeling and dull, smeared with a single brushstroke of mud-based paint—since the wave lines were thick, they must have been depicting the sea.
……Just when one might think it an octopus, its legs weren’t visible; the flatfish—the flounder—had a dully red hue.
A red ray.
What did this signify? …A votive offering symbolizing attendant women meant to accentuate the white heron I had heard called a divine messenger?
As he observed the attendant woman’s single eye glowing yellow, its vertical slit glinting sharply in the ceiling’s darkness—and while explaining to Osei the true nature of the woman on the chopping block—he became momentarily distracted. When he looked back, the pupils with their vertical slits had vanished without warning.

A blister beetle.
A blister beetle was perched.

“Miss Osei, Miss Osei.”
“Is there not a beautiful insect around here—an insect?”

“Yes.”

“Is it here?”

“Yes. It’s here.”

The comb she was holding between her lips fell with a clatter.
Osei took the knot of her obi to the back, tightening her slender waist, and was pulling at the loop, but

“It must be a jewel beetle—so beautiful.”
“Yes, humans—women are so audacious.”
“When I thought it wouldn’t die right away, I wanted both my hairpin and robes.”
“Since this is the shrine’s grounds, I thought the Princess Deity would grant it—so I tried to pin it down with my comb.”
“It darted away—I missed catching it—and now it’s gone.”
“It’s not over there with you?”
“It must be a jewel beetle.”

More than the hairpin from the basket, the robe from the chest, or the abdomen being split open with a naginata—it was at this moment that Kogata’s eyes welled with tears.

No—this concern was unbearable.

“Far from a jewel beetle…”

He could only think she probably didn’t know its name—there was no time to explain it.

“It’s a dangerous poison bug—are you ready, Miss Osei? Go down beneath the hall.”
“Now then… that comb… don’t let your fingers touch your lips.”

“I held the comb by its ridge.”
“But when I smoothed the hair at my temples, there was no water, so I… No—if I’m poisoned, it’s the deity’s will.”
“Don’t trouble yourself over this body.”

Her slightly accented, coaxing tone nevertheless carried her clear resignation.
All the more so—that too was pitiable, that endearing vulnerability.

“Not on your obi, sleeves, anywhere?”

Again, he saw a lonely, translucent figure visible through the emerald shade of the giant enoki tree. Does even water have its season of fullness? The clear spring at the tree's roots overflowed.

Ah，it’s fortunate it wasn’t when I drank water earlier．

He led her down．the．stairs；in．the．dark．space．of．the．latticed．shutters，there．came．a．clattering．sound．

“Oh—has the naginata come loose?”

The surface of the clear water swayed to the reverberation of that sound, inlaying with silver both the moss on the ladle like gemstones and the gaps where branches clustered.

“Oh my, look—look there! The naginata is flying through the sky!”

Over the enoki treetops, riding a rabbit-like cloud.

“Like a peach-colored crescent moon,” she said.

Even to the eyes of Kogata—the heretical poet who once likened Matsushima’s roadside clouds after rain to tofu and its heat haze to fried tofu—there was no doubt in this upward gaze. Behold the wings of the soaring bird—adorned with silver light like the naginata’s sharp blade, spread out like water-red gauze, akin to a crescent moon’s sickle.

“It flew toward Ōnuma Swamp.”
“This is Shirasagi Myojin’s guidance.”
“I’ll go there… go and…”

“Go and do what?”
“Go.”

“Now that I feel this way, I cannot keep against my skin the pregnancy sash blessed by Kannon to protect the child in my womb.”
“There was nowhere to untie it, nowhere to discard it, nowhere to cast it away.”
“Things pressed against a woman’s skin will eventually be seen by others.”
“If I sealed it in a drawer, the Buddha’s mercy—tainted by this wicked woman’s vile thoughts—might stretch into snakes, shrink into leeches, tear apart, and become spiders.”
“Though there was no place to dispose of it, I was guided to receive admonishment together.”
“Mr. Kogata.”
“They say that swamp’s center swirls with a vortex dragging water into unfathomable depths… I heard this from the old man……”

And she firmly grasped the edge of Senkichi’s sleeve.

“Do you know the way there?”

“Yes… I tried to throw myself in… twice… three times.”

From the broken western edge of the railing—where the earth billowed like sleeves, through thickets of tangled trees and smothering kudzu vines that led to what resembled a waterfall from some long-forgotten folktale, its roar silenced as though separating another realm—Osei took the lead without hesitation.
Contrary to expectations, outside ran a narrow, ridged path.
But Kogata felt as if he were being half-led by the mountain princess.
It was not that he deliberately stepped back; rather, even as he thought to close the remaining two or three shaku, he found himself pursuing Osei’s figure—her half-concealed form amid the grasses, like rippling water in striped silk, her black hair flowing.

The swamp could be thought of as half of Shinobazu Pond.
The surroundings were lush with vegetation; the trees grew thick, casting everything in darkness.

It was as they passed through the forest that a blue mirror glimmered among the reeds.

At the shore’s oblique opposite—a giant red snake appeared.
Pulling down the reeds and raising its sickle-shaped head was a bright red helmet.

Kogata had no opportunity to give chase.

Rushing forward, Osei—perhaps having taken caution—seemed briefly supported by tree trunks, but then tore open her collar toward the water with both hands as if rending it apart.
Smooth as polished jade, fine-textured and pure white—the hidden depths of her nipples faintly adorned like violets amid snowdrifts, while the peony-cool disarray came from her downcast eyes glimpsing the pregnancy sash’s knot, twisting tightly as she began to untie it—

“Damn it...”

As the woman’s voice spoke, the echo pierced sharply, and a gunshot rang out.

Kogata assumed a prone stance in the grass.
This might be something done in the West—no, perhaps even closer these days… He was not attempting to kiss her fingertips. Without a moment to speak, he tried to pull Osei down and make her avoid the danger—and yet he failed.

To Kogata’s eyes as he lay in the grass, Osei’s figure appeared—towering high above the peaks against the golden sunset.
In unison—as if the field itself smoldered like a wildfire—the sharp-nosed, enormous gentleman knocked down his rifle; then, also in unison, he tore off his helmet, tossed it high into the air with a *pon*, caught it, threw it again, caught it mid-fall when it dropped, and hurled it once more—all of which Kogata witnessed.
It was not with his feet but with his head that he jerked about.
Immediately he removed his robe, quickly threw off his shoes, and plunged vigorously into the swamp.

Following that, three red boys swam out.

As they drew closer to the center, he saw a nose—yellow tinged with blue, its surface like rotting mushrooms—appear above the elbow of their paddling arm.
They must have been poor swimmers.
Gasping—choking, spewing foam.
But whether this was some concealment technique against birds could not be determined.

“You fool.”

As she spoke as though casting something away, Osei staggered and collapsed, closing her eyes dreamily.

The crimson pregnancy sash—quickly untied and cast off—coiled twofold, threefold into something resembling a great blooming flower, its twin wings unfurled as the white heron skimmed just above the water’s surface, cutting aquatic strides in a straight line against the wave crests advancing with the gentleman’s approach.
On those petals—no, on the end of that pregnancy sash—a bug glittered and glowed blue.

Tilting his nose upward and grabbing the pregnancy sash with both hands, the gentleman plunged into the swamp with a splash.
Next, the sash flipped upward as it surfaced, vanished with a wave like wings, and the gentleman sank.
The three red boys also vanished without a trace.

Only a single stocky, dark-skinned boy trying to enter the water could be seen—Old Man Magohachi had seized his legs and pinned him down. Restrained, he thrust his hands into the water, his legs thrashing like a grasshopper’s—no, given his stocky build, like a cricket’s—as he hammered at an imaginary mortar with his head.

“Walk slowly and steadily, and save only the very last one—”

From midway through her task—having recalled the girl—the Old Shrine Maiden spoke as though issuing a decree to Old Man Magohachi, then indicated the direction.

It was Magohachi who came and discovered that the stocky one had been last, and thus saved him.

This boy provided no small assistance.—Before the investigating officials,

“Since the third day, there had been reports that Ōnuma’s waters turned crimson three times a day.”
“The Ornithologist stated that scarlet birds would come one by one.”
“They’re rare birds—extremely valuable.”
“We proceeded there fully prepared.”
“There was indeed a crimson bird on the opposite shore.”
“We shot it.”
“The bird struck by the gun fell into the center of the swamp.”
“Therefore, we swam as high-class hunting dogs,” he declared clearly.

he declared clearly.

Not only that, but a cantharid was clinging to the gentleman’s tongue.

Not a single person was troubled by the incident.

When he held Osei at the shore, he thought—alas, how pitiful—it was already too late.
Because he detected the smell of gunpowder in his chest.

As the boy tried to draw water there, Magohachi—who had come rushing around while urging him—hurriedly stopped him.
“You mustn’t drink the water!”
“To these old eyes accustomed to mountains and fields—look at the swamp water! What you lot called ‘poisonous insects’ are bobbing up here and there…”

They turned back toward Myojin—even for this, the boy proved useful. Taking the old man’s place, he ran with Osei on his back. When they reached the clear water, spirits descended from the branches and seemed to emerge from the thickets—but swiftly along the ridge came an elderly woman nearing eighty, short-statured and gentle, holding in one hand a sakaki branch adorned with sacred streamers and leaning on a cane, yet arriving briskly to meet them.

“You’ve been through such hardship, dear. There now, there now. All’s well.”

With that, she rubbed Osei’s plump abdomen beneath her sleeve and smiled.
The bullet had struck precisely the metal fitting of the obi clasp at the knot, yet appeared to have missed its mark.
There was a bruise on the tip of her little finger.
The pale contusion—as the old woman’s hands chilled the sakaki branch in clear water—faded into bluish lilac, much like Breitkopf’s cold compress method, while her breast glistened with silver droplets and damp-hued eyelashes quivered to life.

After urging her to hurry to town—but because the old woman remained behind—

“And you?”

When Osei asked,

“Her Majesty proclaims that the cord of her crown has come undone.”

Upon hearing this—why should the living goddess deign to act with her own hands?—let her be made to recall the folding of an eboshi. In any case—Her Ladyship would never have a lover dress her in a haori. She must fasten her own hakama waistband and take her own hat to place it upon her head.

V

It is said that shrine maidens—displaying numerous divine manifestations, astonishing laypeople through their communion with the underworld, and even wielding a form of authority over their domains—remain just as plentiful in the Ouu region now as in ages past, their influence undiminished.

Long ago, several generations of Akita lords strolled through the suburbs.
The village head of Koyasumi, knowing His Lordship was a poet, presented a wooden statue of Hitomaro that had been passed down in his family.
The auspiciousness of His Lordship’s gracious reception and favorable disposition went without saying—on their return journey, he heard there was a spirit-speaking shrine maiden within his domain whom he had never before thought to consult.
He ordered them to guide him there.
The Akita Lord sought to hear Hitomaro’s voice.

Stealthily approaching the eaves of a backstreet, he found the mist enveloping a dilapidated house cold, the pines whispering their ancient song, and a white-robed shrine maiden humming.

“Faintly…”

The Akita Lord thrust open the gate.
“This is it.”
“Ha ha!”
“Let the shrine maidens receive their tribute. … Could their teachings ever reach samurai?”
“Weeping one moment, laughing the next… Ha ha! They remain but playthings for womenfolk.”
“If that be so—” … There was nothing more to say.

However, Magohachi’s old wife was not what they called an “Okamin” shrine maiden in those Akita regions. Having drifted from the Echigo region, she had been a fair-skinned middle-aged woman at that time. When Magohachi summoned him, invoking Lord Kujō Hangan was deemed presumptuous. Benkei—not Kumasaka—must have tried to round up even the dice pips. But when he saw her womanly charms and attempted seduction only to be rebuffed, in bitter frustration he snatched the secret box that was the shrine maiden’s very life yet did not flee back home. This stratagem resembled the retreat from Moscow. Wicked Magohachi prevailed, and unreason triumphed. That too must have been fate. It is said the Echigo shrine maiden sold water candy and sundries, hung straw sandals beneath the eaves, and remained there—poised to build an old woman’s mound.

[The preceding text is omitted] From Magohachi-dono, patron of this temple, we humbly report:
The lady who suffered a miscarriage during her hospitalization has now largely recovered and is even able to take walks outdoors to dispel her melancholy; may Your Excellency rest assured. Now, two evenings prior, there occurred a great storm here. As Old Magohachi happened to pass near a certain cemetery during that time, heaven and earth grew dark, and hail fell with such violence that—amidst lightning flashes—an elegant woman was seen lingering before the Ornithologist’s new grave at that very site. Coldly smiling, her hand shattered into fragments, and a mass of fresh blood splattered onto the raw earth, staining the accumulated hailstones. Like crimson frost pillars, it remained undiminished for a time—though for this humble monk to speak of such matters seems improper. We merely convey what we were entrusted to report. In any case, this cannot be the will of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas; rather, we believe it to be the work of shape-shifting birds under the wondrously stern guidance of Myojin—

Saimyoji Temple Mokugyo.

The priest, despite this being a poor region, affected such stylish pseudonyms as "Mokugyo."
But be that as it may—(the holy man's letter being paraphrased)—the essence of this missive sent to Kogata in Tokyo was that the woman had suffered disgrace, shattered the glass of her womb, and flung back her tainted blood into the tomb of carnal desire—a conclusion not entirely implausible.

Shōwa 8 (1933), January