Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Okamoto Kanoko

“The gleam in Master’s eyes has grown noticeably dull lately.”

The clerks and apprentices of the shop had begun to whisper such disparaging remarks about their master，Sōemon.

Within Sōemon Yamakiya’s vast estate stood dozens of iroha-numbered commodity warehouses, lined up in rows.
The total number of clerks and apprentices, grouped several to each warehouse, exceeded a hundred.
For a single topic arising from some corner of that multitude to spread throughout them all required considerable time.
And unless such a topic possessed considerable certainty and universality, most would always fizzle out in some corner, or among half or about one-third of them.
It remained unclear when or where this rumor about Sōemon Yamakiya had first arisen, or how much time had passed before it spread throughout the entire estate, but regardless, it now possessed a certainty and universality unlike anything before.
Moreover, there had never been a topic so directly relevant to the entire group.

That piercing gaze of Sōemon Yamakiya's—capable of seeing through every corner of his estate with a single glance—had been honed by his remarkable mercantile spirit, through which he had amassed an immense fortune in a single lifetime as official purveyor to Edo's feudal lords.
That gaze of his—which had not easily weakened even as he advanced in age—had suddenly dulled due to an undeniable event, a tragic occurrence that had recently struck the Yamakiya household without warning, uprooting and scattering its happiness entirely.

Sōemon had two daughters.
The elder daughter, Osayo, harbored a certain allure within her maple-like loneliness.
Osato, the younger sister, was endlessly showy and gorgeous.
Sōemon Yamakiya’s happiness could not be satisfied by merely amassing an immense fortune in a single lifetime—people envied him for also possessing two daughters whose beauty seemed to gather spring and autumn’s essence into one moment.
Those two daughters—Osayo at nineteen and Osato who had just turned seventeen that spring—were struck by severe acute rheumatism, becoming lame one after the other.
The shock felt by others was, for Sōemon and his wife, a shock beyond shock and a sorrow beyond sorrow.
Otsugi, his wife, suddenly aggravated her chronic heart disease as a result and died.
Otsugi had accompanied Sōemon Yamakiya for thirty years, passing beneath his tenacity and sharp talent while living in patient submission.
Otsugi’s sole pleasure had been peeking three or four times daily into the room where maids and wet nurses attended her beloved daughters; she worked quietly alongside servants, her nature never standing out enough for praise or criticism.
But like a giant tree losing its support, Sōemon Yamakiya heavily collapsed into a seated position before Otsugi’s lifeless face.
The pale withered cheeks of Otsugi’s lifeless face—she who had died at fifty, having earnestly entrusted her suddenly lame daughters to her husband with her final breath.

On a cloudy afternoon in late May, Otsugi’s funeral was held at Taiso Temple, the Yamakiya family’s temple.
Sōemon Yamakiya walked in the middle of the funeral procession, escorted by chief clerk Seinosuke and male relatives.

Now, Otsugi’s coffin passed majestically through Taiso Temple’s gate—a structure that Sōemon Yamakiya’s late-life vanity had secretly hoped would draw the awe of the entire district, manifesting his excessive wealth in tangible form.
To Sōemon Yamakiya seeing this ostentatious gate after long absence, it somehow clashed with the ancient hues of old pine branches in the temple’s front garden—branches bearing desolate beauty that formed its backdrop.
The pride and satisfaction he customarily felt toward this temple gate had utterly vanished from him.
He found relief rather in how the gaudy luster of polished tiles lay dulled under the oppressive color of low-hanging overcast clouds.
He averted his swollen eyes from the temple gate and heaved a sigh.
He strained not to see his own name displayed at the donation plaque’s pinnacle by the gate—positioned as if he were the temple’s guardian patron.
Before even the unconcerned Head Priest might act, he conjured the foolish visage of that steward who normally busied himself with such vulgar matters.

Taiso Temple was poor despite its high temple rank.
Compared to the new, imposing temple gate, the main hall appeared old and shabby like a few straggling hairs.
Otsugi’s coffin placed at the very center of the tatami-matted floor in that reddish main hall looked increasingly grand and splendid.
Sōemon Yamakiya sat formally in seiza and surveyed both the main hall and the large crowd of mourners packed together as if symbolizing his influence in this land.
And once again he turned his gaze to Otsugi’s coffin.
The bluish withered corpse laid out within... He recalled what he had felt beside her body before encoffinment—how Otsugi in her youth had possessed a well-fleshed face exquisitely proportioned beyond others', though petite, and how she had unknowingly aged into this pallid shriveled state.
At that moment he found himself wretched—this self who had toiled for decades without ever properly committing his own wife’s form to mind.

For Otsugi—who had never once begged her husband, strict with expenses, for anything other than the costs of adorning their two daughters (indeed, these were expenses Sōemon Yamakiya himself had willingly offered)—he conceived the idea of making splendid what would be her final garment: the coffin.
He had constructed a coffin of thick cypress wood so wide that even two of Otsugi’s corpses could have fit inside.
When placing Otsugi’s corpse into it in the inner room of the house, one relative who had long felt awkward deliberately remarked in a voice meant to be overheard, “All that sudden stinginess must have made Mrs. Otsugi catch a cold.”
Rather than flying into a rage as he normally would, Sōemon Yamakiya instead thought “Ah, true,” and proceeded to fill the empty spaces around the corpse with various items.
Before anyone knew it, he filled the coffin with coral root covers and a pearl-inlaid tobacco pouch Otsugi had meticulously stored away; the striped crepe coat she had cherished too dearly to wear; her daughters’ farewell dolls; two red-and-white habutae silk futon covers Sōemon Yamakiya himself had received from an Edo domain elder; and even had silk tabi socks specially made for Otsugi’s small feet to tread her solitary journey beyond death—adding an extra pair for changing.
Sōemon Yamakiya muttered a hastily memorized Buddhist chant under his breath as he assisted with every task.
Then again, somewhere the servants whispered among themselves: “The Master has broken down. It’s because seeing the young ladies like that has weakened his spirit.” But Sōemon Yamakiya knew himself to be a man of resolute will—(I won’t say anything to anyone anymore)—once he steeled his resolve.
And, feeling that this too was somehow lonely, he blinked the eyes that had been fixed on the coffin.
In that state, without saying a word, he had followed Otsugi’s coffin to the temple.

Sōemon Yamakiya felt a slight dizziness and closed his eyes.
A voice resembling Otsugi's entreaty seemed to come from somewhere.
Then once more, behind his closed eyelids appeared vivid images of his two daughters' crippled forms.
He shook his head fiercely to dispel them, but instead saw rotating scenes etch themselves even more clearly.
After all, this was still before Otsugi's coffin had reached the temple.
It was finally time to carry it out from the inner chamber of the house.
The two daughters—who had repeatedly visited Otsugi's deathbed during lulls in visitors—now emerged together from the detached house across the garden.
At that moment, however discreet they tried to be, people overflowed around the coffin, swirling through both upper and lower rooms.
Though muted until now, the restless murmuring crowd abruptly fell silent.
Sōemon instinctively turned his gaze toward the garden's depths.
There stood Osayo and Osato in pure white mourning robes, emerging from sparse gardenia blossoms to appear by the pampas-fringed tsukubai well.
Two sturdy young maids flanked them—the sisters, though slenderly built and taller than average, precariously braced their hands on the maids' shoulders while haltingly moving their one functional leg.
An elderly maidservant in formal black crested kimono followed quietly with a junior maid in tow... Soon Sōemon's tear-blurred vision magnified the daughters' figures as they passed through the hushed crowd toward Otsugi's coffin.
He scrambled to his feet.
Urgently he ordered a high platform placed on the coffin.
Both crowd and daughters froze in astonishment.
Sōemon sought to prevent his daughters from sitting there.
For seated, their lower bodies—with one stiff leg splayed—would form a pitiful grotesque mound.
The coffin reached precisely to their chests.
Again they approached it.

The elder sister and the younger sister pressed their foreheads together in unison... As they extended their slender necks and leaned forward, the white silk crepe sleeves of their long-sleeved kimonos slipped from the round shoulders of their maids, spreading out to either side like crane wings... The crowd caught their breath at this pure and alluring spectacle.
The daughters remained silent and cried for a while.
When they raised their faces, tears like jewels spilled from the cheeks of the two.
The glossy black hair of the two daughters—elaborately styled to match the thick makeup applied by the elderly maidservant, a former court attendant—and the luster of their exquisite brows further refined the dignity of their countenances, which bore not a trace of rouge today.
Particularly the younger daughter’s Fuji-shaped forehead—now rendered even more striking by recent sorrow—appeared to Sōemon Yamakiya with heartrendingly poignant beauty.

“Boonn—” A low, rounded bell toll reverberated through every corner of the main hall.
Sōemon Yamakiya’s reminiscence, as if awakening from a dream, was abruptly cut off.
He hurriedly opened his eyes.
The sutra chanting was about to begin.
The Head Priest of Taiso Temple, accompanied by five or six attendant priests, quietly approached the coffin.
Sōemon Yamakiya blinked his eyes repeatedly as he gazed at the Head Priest’s dull-colored robe from behind.
The candlelight before the Buddha flickered across the Head Priest’s thinly balding crown.
Sōemon Yamakiya would usually secretly let slip a self-satisfied smile.
The Head Priest was three or four years younger than Sōemon.
Sōemon Yamakiya still had neither streaks of white hair nor any baldness.
Though quite a renowned priest, he always wore shabby, dull-colored robes and appeared somewhat feeble—a sight that normally struck the faithless Sōemon Yamakiya as rather comical.
But today, to Sōemon Yamakiya, the Head Priest’s dull-colored form seemed somehow noble.

"How strange. I've changed too."

Sōemon Yamakiya muttered inwardly to himself.

When summer came, the two daughters became all the more beautiful.
The pathos of their maimed forms added a pure yet alluring shadow to their former beauty.
But though they still wore matching gaudy crepe summer kimonos this year too, they no longer walked to firefly hunts or evening cool in the garden, letting their jewel-like heels spill from the hems.
Forming a grotesque heap with their lower bodies, the two remained quietly in the detached house’s room.
Tedious and distressing—yet without voicing this to each other much, the two merely wiped the sweat from their beautiful brows.

“Do have a look—this morning brings nine reds, six purples, four shibori-patterned and seven whites… then lapis lazuli ones…”

The elderly maidservant had a young maid carry a well-polished brass washbasin to the bamboo veranda.
Dozens upon dozens of morning glory blossoms—red, purple, lapis lazuli, white, and variegated blooms plucked from their trellises—floated upon the brimming water’s surface of the washbasin like small umbrellas stripped of their stems.
The elderly maidservant had acquired this daily morning pleasure during her youth while serving at a daimyo's mansion.

“Oh, Master!”

The young maid said from behind the elderly maidservant.
Everyone raised their eyes from the water’s surface where their gazes had been fixed.
Sōemon Yamakiya, wearing an old ceremonial robe, walked slowly along the garden path leading to the main house.

“How unusual.”

The elderly maidservant wrinkled her face and smiled.

“Oh, Father.”

The gentle Osayo felt both happy and nostalgic.
She suddenly began to adjust her posture.
But the sensitive Osato felt something strike her heart.
Osato remained still and silent.
On the largest stepping stone in the front garden, Sōemon Yamakiya stood and smiled bleakly.

“How unusual.”

The elderly maidservant earnestly tried to usher Sōemon Yamakiya into the sitting room.

This morning too, each time he looked, the beauty of the two daughters grew more pronounced.
Was it not that the ugliness of their lower bodies was increasingly manifesting its inverse proportion in their upper bodies?
The beauty tinged with irony was increasingly thrust upon Sōemon Yamakiya.
The pain Sōemon Yamakiya felt when looking at his daughters’ beautiful upper bodies was no different from the pain of seeing their ugly lower parts.

It was because of this pain that Sōemon Yamakiya gradually ceased visiting his daughters’ room.
He had instead ceased visiting his daughters, who had become even more dependent after losing their mother.

“Father, how have you been passing your time?”

Osayo looked up at her father nostalgically.

“Well, business has been keeping me rather busy.”
“And then with your mother passing away, there’s been all sorts of matters at home…”

Seeing Osato keeping her eyes firmly downcast, Sōemon Yamakiya fell silent.

“Oh, the morning glories are lovely.”

If he raised his gaze slightly from that washbasin, there lay Osayo’s grotesque legs—Sōemon shuddered and instead looked up at the elderly maidservant’s face.

“How are you both faring every day?”

Sōemon Yamakiya had not visited since that evening four days prior. For over a decade since his daughters had moved from Otsugi's busy care to that of their nursemaid and begun living in this detached house, each time Sōemon Yamakiya went to or returned from the main house twice daily, he would invariably stop by this room. Even though there had been times when he came late at night slightly drunk from a nightcap, the elderly maidservant could not comprehend what this recent busyness entailed - this neglect of trips to Edo and shop affairs.

“The master has been frequently visiting Taiso Temple lately.”

Though she had overheard this from the clerks, she still could not comprehend why he would grow distant from his daughters just to visit his wife’s grave so obsessively.

“Master, might there be another construction project starting at Taiso Temple?”

“No, there’s nothing.”

For some reason, Sōemon Yamakiya flusteredly cut off the elderly maidservant’s words.

“Father, please have a seat on the cushion.”

Osayo had the young maid fetch a hemp zabuton and urged him to sit.

“Ah, thank you, but don’t trouble yourselves—I must be off again shortly.”

When Sōemon Yamakiya sat on the zabuton cushion at the veranda edge facing the garden, he felt against his profile the sharp gaze of Osato—who had looked up at her father for the first time—

(Osato has noticed everything)

Sōemon Yamakiya, who had particularly loved Osato’s vivacity, now came to fear her more than anyone else. In time, that fear became a kind of hatred. Feeling pity for Osayo, he carelessly turned his steps toward the detached house—only to stop abruptly upon remembering Osato. Though his business calculations dulled and his vigilance in inspecting the warehouses dimmed, the gleam in Sōemon Yamakiya’s eyes—fixed secretly on the detached house from afar—burned with uncanny intensity. The grotesque forms of his daughters—all the uglier for their beauty—gradually took shape as Sōemon Yamakiya’s peculiar torment, clinging to him as delusional obsession.

Another night, Sōemon Yamakiya awoke.
In the spacious ten-mat room, Sōemon Yamakiya lay alone.
The lingering raindrops from the evening shower pattered against the roof.
Because the night was muggy, Sōemon Yamakiya pushed off the bedding and got up to smoke tobacco.
He sat on the floor and picked up the pipe by his pillow.
When he pulled it closer to look, unfortunately the embers in the tobacco brazier had gone out, so he turned his knees toward the lamp—naturally, he ended up facing straight toward the detached house.

——

(Damn it!)

He scolded himself under his breath.
For Sōemon Yamakiya, these two daughters had now become delusional demons.
The detached house was indeed the abode of deluded beings.
Once again, Osayo and Osato—along with the occasional instance of the deceased Otsugi—became examples of grotesque forms that circled before Sōemon Yamakiya’s eyes.

Sōemon Yamakiya set down his tobacco pipe and hurriedly began chanting in a moderate voice the half-remembered repentance sutra imparted to him by the Head Priest of Taiso Temple at the start of summer.

我昔所造諸悪業皆由無始貪瞋痴

従身語意之所生一切我今皆懺悔

This chanting having subsided for a time, and after the phantasms of his daughters had circled once more, the spectral impressions of every last warehouse within the estate began to dance before his eyes.
Lacquered and gleaming soy sauce warehouses, miso warehouses armored with waist-high wooden planks, and other robust stone-built rice and bean warehouses.

He continued reciting the sutra, this time in a slightly louder voice.
But with a single blink, the phantoms of his daughters returned once more.

When the voice of sutra recitation rose sharply, his daughters' figures vanished—then the phantoms of shop clerks, apprentices, and maids began streaming before his eyes.

There were apprentices squinting their eyes, the old head clerk bowing deeply, and from their shadows emerged the resentful face of a middle-aged man he had once dismissed without cause over a mistaken delivery address.

Sōemon Yamakiya staggered to his feet and nearly collapsed.
But bracing himself with effort, he settled back humbly upon the futon.
He fully assumed the formal posture for sutra recitation.
Without pause, he continued chanting the repentance text.

Since the beginning of summer, Sōemon Yamakiya had become a Buddhist disciple of Taiso Temple. It was about a month after Otsugi had died. One day, Sōemon Yamakiya broke through his inherent stubbornness and prostrated himself at the feet of Taiso Temple’s Head Priest. It was not that he had suddenly awakened to religious faith. It was also born from a somewhat utilitarian notion he had—that the Head Priest, being a monk devoted to saving all beings, must possess some means to rescue him from his overwhelming loneliness and suffering. At that moment, the Head Priest sat formally with his back to the shoji screens brightly illuminated by the afternoon sunlight of the cleared rainy season. In the inner garden, peonies were blooming splendidly. Since Otsugi’s funeral, Sōemon Yamakiya had increasingly come to regard the Head Priest’s dull-colored figure as noble. Today, that feeling deepened even more. However, he could not immediately express his own feelings. The Head Priest first called to mind the misfortune of Sōemon Yamakiya’s daughters. Next, he thought of the death of his wife Otsugi.

“Well, I can mostly understand what’s in your heart.”
“You should come by from time to time.”

The Head Priest said amiably and had an apprentice bring tea.

Since then, rumors of Sōemon Yamakiya’s frequent visits to Taiso Temple grew prominent both within and outside the Soeda household.
Sōemon Yamakiya increasingly left his business affairs to be managed by the head clerk.

Summer deepened steadily.
The basic Buddhist doctrine of karma began to reach Sōemon Yamakiya’s ears.
The Head Priest tentatively asked Sōemon Yamakiya whether he could not conceive that his past evil deeds had manifested as his daughters’ disability.

“Preposterous! I’ve neither taken a life nor stolen anyone’s belongings.”

Sōemon Yamakiya unintentionally let out his habitual obstinacy and spoke in a defiant tone toward the Head Priest.
The Head Priest waved his hand and calmly expounded.

“You misunderstand—who can say how much we’ve made others and ourselves shoulder this invisible burden of karma? A weight without form or visibility, carried through all our past deeds.”

Under the Head Priest’s weighty tone, Sōemon Yamakiya was crushed.

“That may well be the case, I suppose.”
“That I am a stubborn man is something I clearly recognize myself.”
“But since that stubbornness also allowed me to build up my fortune, I never considered it such a bad thing.”

“Then why aren’t you satisfied with that fortune alone? Even were your daughters to fall into ruin, even were your wife to perish for its sake...”

Sōemon Yamakiya lowered his head sharply.

“Then, Venerable Head Priest—what must I do to resolve this karma?”

“Ah—if it’s karma unseen by eyes and unviolated in form, then there remains no path but gradual repayment within your heart. First, chant this incantation whenever time allows.”
“Chant it from your very core, and repentance’s essence will seep through past, present and future alike—evil karma will extinguish itself of its own accord.”

Sōemon Yamakiya began searching his own past for invisible karmic causes lacking visible form.

Sōemon Yamakiya’s ancestors had held high-ranking positions in a certain domain of the northern provinces.
However, when the domain faced collapse due to an unfortunate incident, they concealed themselves as impoverished farmers in the deep grasses of Musashino.
Sōemon Yamakiya’s parents had died young due to their misfortune.
Born into a samurai family yet orphaned, Sōemon Yamakiya received neither discipline nor cultured upbringing, merely prolonging his life until eight or nine through the sympathy of his village.
And then he was sent to become an apprentice to a purveyor in Edo.
Due to his ambition, tenacity, and vigor—traits that somewhat provoked his master’s displeasure and earned him his peers’ resentment—he rapidly surpassed them all.
In this manner, not long past twenty, he had already gained recognition from the stewards of various daimyos who frequented the establishment for his exceptional business acumen and diligence.
Moreover—perhaps owing to his undisputed lineage—despite being uneducated and obstinate, he possessed an innate sense of decorum and even displayed a particular talent for interacting with samurai households.
Now he overwhelmed the others and even surpassed the most seasoned head clerk to seize control of the shop.

At that moment, the master and his wife suddenly perished simultaneously due to a raging epidemic.
The shop soon collapsed.
Many of the servants also naturally dispersed.
However, he—being practically the heart of the shop at that time—could not simply withdraw.
The daughter Otsugi, whom the master had left behind alone, naturally came into his possession and became his wife; as there was no one except the elderly retired head clerk to inherit the master’s clientele, that outcome too naturally came to him.

In the western suburbs of Edo, the advantageous location he had chosen also brought him fortune.
He exerted his energy, tenacity, and ambition without reserve.
He multiplied the number of daimyo clients inherited from his master—fivefold, sevenfold, tenfold—with each passing year. Over twenty horse-drawn carts departed daily toward Edo, loaded with goods from the dozens of warehouses arrayed within his vast estate.
On the three-ri thoroughfare to Edo, there was never a day that was without the shadow of their cargo.
Around him clustered hundreds of male and female employees, from Edo’s suburbs to the farthest reaches of the northern and western provinces.
He was healthy and had even forgotten about aging.
The wife was obedient and the daughters grew up beautiful…….

He could not help but regard the course of his prosperity and happiness as nothing more than the natural reward earned through his thirty-odd years of diligence and integrity.
He held a copy of the repentance sutra in his hand and even felt some resentment—though to be sure, during his wife’s funeral, he had felt some regret and pity toward her.
But as atonement of that degree, he had sufficiently mourned her at the time—and there were indeed moments when he reflected on whether he had been somewhat harsh to his servants.
However, in the end, that too amounted to nothing more than mercilessly dismissing and disciplining undesirables—surely such atonement should have been sufficiently repaid by favoring servants of good character…… But what could it be? What karmic cause has so cruelly haunted his present fate⁈

“Well, let it be—do not fixate that focus so intensely in one place.”
“If you concentrate too hard in one spot, it will inevitably breed delusions—wouldn’t it trouble you if your daughters started seeming like madwomen?”
“Forget everything for now and stay carefree awhile.”
“And when your spirits grow too heavy, read that repentance sutra.”

The Head Priest, seeing how further explanations of complex doctrines would likely remain beyond Sōemon Yamakiya’s grasp, simply comforted him as he was.

For a time, Sōemon Yamakiya voluntarily acquainted himself with difficult sutras, striving to swiftly uncover some truth and somehow secure salvation.
Yet to him, they remained merely an indecipherable jumble of characters.
They offered no immediate relief to his present anguish.
When at home, he found himself preoccupied solely with thoughts of the detached house.
He perpetually worried about neglecting his two daughters.
The daughters' recent aloofness toward their father had become an extraordinary source of torment for him.
Yet what truly elevated him to the height of dread was above all else the necessity of beholding his daughters' grotesque forms.

The two never once emerged from the detached house.
Even so when he was at home he could immediately sense its presence nearby.
The inner garden’s path; beyond the Tsukubai Well through a gap in gardenias; low elegant roof glimpsed between branches.
How many times daily did this vision catch his eye?
Unwittingly he drifted apart from his daughters.
Words of explanation dwindled then failed entirely.
His weakened nerves shed pretense like autumn leaves abandoning trees.
Even maidservants approaching from that quarter found him turning away.

The vast sums of money that daily accrued from his thriving business gradually grew distasteful to him.
He remained desperate to meticulously identify some semblance of karmic cause within his surroundings.
Yet not a single human pillar had been enshrined in any of the numerous warehouses across his estate.
Had even one mortar and pestle in those granaries—which pounded out countless bushels daily—ever crushed so much as a fingertip among those dozens of workers? ...There was nothing.
No one had done anything to anyone.
Into this estate he had purified himself and laid its foundations over thirty years prior—why then had such a wretched phantom—no—what karmic cause had manifested itself through the monstrous forms of his pitiable daughters?

The house, the mansion, and the warehouses—all that had once been his very life—had now become places where his hatred and resentment drifted without restraint.
He frequently went out to Taiso Temple, if only to avoid staying at home.
If he did not go, his mind would not be at ease.

“Head Priest, please allow me to undertake the reconstruction of the main hall.”

Sōemon Yamakiya proposed.

“This is a gracious offer, but for me, this main hall suffices. Firstly, its aged patina suits my taste, and moreover, between myself and this hall lies a particular karmic bond.”

The Head Priest calmly declined Sōemon Yamakiya’s proposal.
Yet he found Sōemon’s recent condition profoundly pitiable.
Abstruse doctrines and kōans could not save him now.
If merely puttering between the main hall and kitchen quarters brought him solace, that sufficed.
The Head Priest ever turned a tranquil visage toward him.

Sōemon Yamakiya brought an armful of candles from his house and randomly lit them as votive lights before the Buddha.
He would find thick nandina branches, chop them up, polish them, and make several latches.
He had fine confections prepared and offered them before the Buddha and to the Head Priest.
In the end, he kept them supplied even in the storage rooms.
There was a quiet, unassuming novice monk named Tainen who would skillfully prepare tea and often offer it to Sōemon Yamakiya.
He carried a thin summer futon from home.
And spent half the day in afternoon naps in the cool area behind the kitchen, then returned home in the brisk evening.
The villagers who frequently saw him in that state had, over the years, begun transforming their longstanding resentment toward his opulence into some measure of sympathy.
His heart was dark as he returned home from Taiso Temple.
He was terrified.
He was consumed by unfocused anger.
He tightly closed the shutters on the side facing the detached house’s roof in the inner quarters early one midsummer evening.

From an autumn evening onward, Sōemon Yamakiya built a small hermitage next to the temple’s storage rooms and secluded himself there. The temple’s caretaker, understanding his inner turmoil, did not raise any particular objections. The villagers, too, did not question it much. However, many did gossip that Sōemon Yamakiya had gone slightly mad. Sōemon Yamakiya returned home about once every three days, but even then, it was only to wander vacantly through a portion of the mansion.

The daily account books brought by the chief clerk no longer seemed to affect him deeply. Very rarely, he would timidly inquire about his daughters’ well-being. However, neither the chief clerk nor any of the shop staff spoke in much detail. In truth, the daughters’ circumstances were not known in much detail at the shop. The only thing known for certain was that they were safe. Each time, Sōemon Yamakiya felt an inexplicably vexing sensation. But he also felt a sigh of relief.

Soon after Sōemon Yamakiya came to the temple, he encountered a difficulty.
In a wall painting within a room connecting the storage area to the temple kitchen, there existed an image of a female Bodhisattva whose creator and origin remained unknown.
It was an autumn evening at twilight.
Sōemon Yamakiya stood utterly transfixed before it.
This female Bodhisattva had strangely stimulated Sōemon Yamakiya's sexual desire.
The Bodhisattva image stood life-sized.
Who could have painted this with such exquisite skill?
The plump cheeks, the delicate nose, the slender lips neither too tight nor too thin.
The half-open eyes—elongated and containing a moistness like a fragment of ocean tide—paired with ash-gray eyebrows of tender grace that followed their contour. These features reflected the luminous glow from the broad, rounded forehead's urna—whether to heighten their allure or because each detail had been meticulously imbued with feminine sentiment remained unclear—but regardless, he had never felt so captivated by any masterpiece of feminine beauty before, not even those depicting mere voluptuousness or coquetry.
Does voluptuousness only truly come alive when suffused with purity—does allure deepen endlessly through such union?—

In the deepening dusk, the female Bodhisattva image came vividly alive and pressed in upon Sōemon Yamakiya.
From rounded shoulders flowed lines that tapered into fingertips like aligned petals—fingers whose natural pale pink flesh tones evoked blossoms—while every single fold of the gauzy robes fluttering against her delicate lower body harbored unfathomable ardor within their shadows.
Sōemon Yamakiya’s sexual desire at that moment was not mere physical lust.
A longing for a woman he had almost never felt before—a longing he could not obtain even when sought, and which he had never even attempted to seek—now gripped him. He found himself steadily sinking into a sweet sorrow that wrenched at his chest.
He knelt there.
He had fallen into a mystical ecstasy he had never before experienced in his life.
When he opened his eyes again, his field of vision was entirely dark.
He gently touched the wall.
A chill—or so he must have thought—he shook his fingertips at the bizarre sensation and fled to his room.

(What a cursed wretch I am)

He crouched by the hearth.
The room was pitch dark.
Outside the tightly closed room, there was not a sound.
Two or three flickers of fire licking at the hearth’s ashes drew his thoughts inward, like romantic lamplight from a dream of some distant past or future.

Sōemon Yamakiya, for a man over fifty years of age, possessed a youthful physique; yet this only served to impose an oppressive sort of antagonism born of his stubbornness and boldness upon those who encountered him, such that none perceived any sense of lewdness from him.
In truth, it could be said that he had almost no such conduct from birth.
When he was at Edo’s main house—as a mere apprentice once during his youth, and two or three times after becoming a young man—he had been forcibly persuaded by peers and seniors to set foot in brothels.
There, he had merely satisfied some curious sexual urges without developing any lingering attachment in his heart.
Rather than that, he increasingly resented the intrusiveness until he cleanly ceased yielding to any further temptations from others.
There had also been a time when he had secretly been infatuated with a lovely girl named Oshizu—the daughter of a carpenter who had been a serving maid at the main house.
But the pride of his samurai lineage eventually instilled in him a solemn dignity that compelled him to reject this infatuation.
Because Oshizu was the daughter of a poor carpenter.
Even his wife Otsugi—the fact that she was a daughter of the main house had only slightly mitigated his pride—had persisted throughout merely as someone he had taken as a wife out of convenience, an ordinary girl from a merchant family.
Had he truly spent decades of his prime completely satisfied with Otsugi alone—a shadowy, almost nonexistent presence?
No, it was not that women’s shadows had never crossed his heart.

During his daughters' infancy, there had been a wet nurse named Oteru whom they had employed at the detached house for about half a year—though now he detested even associating the detached house with that wet nurse—a twenty-five- or twenty-six-year-old woman who had returned from a marriage at some merchant family. She possessed a flamboyant beauty bright enough to illuminate her surroundings. Moreover, her disposition was so prone to infatuation and restlessness that one could easily believe she had been sent away from her marital home. Then, from among the shop maidservants, he had also discovered a rarely lovely, forlorn, and somehow charming young girl named Osaku. However, the former restraint stemmed from practical anxiety that the household might fall into disorder, while the latter arose from his ever-present pride gradually restraining him before any misstep could occur. Osaku was the daughter of a shabby rice-pounder from the warehouse.

When he reflected on how his long life had passed, there had not been a single woman before whom he had devotedly prostrated himself in ecstasy imbued with both physical desire and heartfelt affection. Sōemon Yamakiya felt sadness. That the allure of love—which he had never bestowed upon any living woman throughout his long life—should now, in his old age and amidst such wretched circumstances, be evoked by a mere image of a female Bodhisattva that he could neither touch nor hear.

(Is this too from some karmic cause?)

Sōemon Yamakiya closed his eyes and crouched even deeper into the darkness.

Since that time, Sōemon Yamakiya resolved to avoid passing before the female Bodhisattva as much as possible.
But unless he passed by at least two or three times a day, Sōemon Yamakiya’s freedom in this temple life would be utterly stripped away.
Thus, Sōemon Yamakiya resolved to always pass before it—either awkwardly turning his face away or closing his eyes.
He naively believed that before long, he would be able to return to viewing the mural with the same detached composure he had before knowing that mysterious ecstasy.
Eagerly, Sōemon Yamakiya diligently carried this out—five days passed, then seven.
And then from ten days to half a month—but it was no good.

Even so, during that brief initial period, Sōemon Yamakiya thought it successful. If things continued like this, he thought, five days would pass and it would easily come to nothing. Next, he slightly narrowed his eyes, which had been tightly shut. As the hemline of the image blurred, revealing only a few inches, his chest fluttered slightly. Still not good enough, he thought in a panic, and closed his eyes. But only the throbbing remained in his chest—no matter how tightly he shut them, it was futile. This time, when he turned the corner of the storehouse room, he immediately averted his gaze. On top of that, he tightly closed his eyes again. However, it still didn’t work. The moment he approached the mural, he finally began to feel the female Bodhisattva’s cheek. Gradually, her eyebrows, her lips, her nose, her forehead, the curve of her rounded shoulders, the folds of her beguiling robes—and his chest grew ever more shamefully agitated. Not only did the adventure he had undertaken one day fail to succeed, but it nearly plunged him into an abyss of desolation.

He ordered the temple’s cleaning woman to fully open the window shutters before the image and had her thoroughly clean all four directions, leaving them pristine.
He thoroughly wiped his own body with cold water.
And he finished putting on the new undergarments he had specially sent for from his home.

It was past noon on a warm, clear winter day, with heat hazes shimmering.
He opened his eyes wide and quietly approached the female Bodhisattva painting.

(Look clearly.
Look clearly in the bright light of day and awaken from delusions.)

He sternly commanded himself.
Within the hushed serenity of this illumination, the image lay gently radiant before him.
He halted his steps roughly two feet away and methodically surveyed the painting from top to bottom.

An unexpected calm settled over him—as a crisp breeze brushed his face, he imagined his chest might expand with newfound openness.
Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes... With faint bodily tremors, Sōemon Yamakiya collapsed prostrate before the mural.
Every ounce of vitality in his body—accompanied by mingled ecstasy and dread—was being violently wrung dry by some unseen force and scattered into oblivion, while simultaneously, the mural amplified its allure—a bold daytime radiance blending stately elegance and sensual shimmer—until it pressed directly against Sōemon's furrowed brow.

Since then, for two or three days, he was tormented by an oppressive burning passion and could neither eat nor sleep properly.
And as it gradually receded, he became like a hollow shell.
While chanting empty recitations of Buddhist prayers—since he now rarely ventured outside his room—he took to using a newly installed toilet reserved exclusively for his quarters.
In his room, he remained stubbornly silent, tending the charcoal fire in the hearth.
He even began to show an increasingly irritable demeanor toward those who brought account books from the shop.

He almost stopped going to the Head Priest’s room as well.
The Head Priest, on the contrary, would sometimes grow concerned about his condition and come to check on him.
But he continued adding charcoal to the hearth with few words.
As for one recent shame, he could not bring himself to tell the Head Priest about it, no matter what.
He finally began to feel the burden he could not confess when meeting with the Head Priest.

To escape that burden, to distance himself from the temptation of the image that all too readily drew near, and for another sudden notion of his own, at the beginning of the following spring, he relocated to a corner of the cultivated land behind the temple. He called for an elderly couple from his home to cook meals. The cultivated land was Sōemon Yamakiya's property. He collected enormous peony roots from various places. A gardener from distant regions came to stay, and he hired villagers in turns to assist.

When early summer arrived, peony flowers bloomed profusely across the entire field.
The villagers and even the normally imperturbable Head Priest stared wide-eyed in astonishment.
A smile rose from the depths of Sōemon Yamakiya’s bitter anguish.
He muttered to no one in particular:

“An offering to Buddha, this is.”

He felt some relief in thus scattering his family estate—which might yet become some karmic cause hereafter—in this manner.

The surrounding lands around the temple, one after another, were purchased by Sōemon Yamakiya at astonishingly high prices.

Wisteria, irises, chrysanthemums, lotuses.
Cherry blossoms, maples, and peaches each in turn displayed their seasonal glory.
He had modeled the temple’s surroundings after a scene from a paradise painting and fashioned them into magnificent splendor.
Yet Sōemon Yamakiya’s heart found no solace.
No—rather, it grew ever more desolate.
There were days when he tore apart the plants he had painstakingly nurtured.
There were days when he shut himself in his retreat, refusing to gaze upon the scenery outside.
People marveled at the splendid vistas surrounding the temple.
But they increasingly spread rumors of Sōemon’s madness.

In the third year after the New Year had begun, around the time when plum blossoms were starting to bloom here and there, the representative of all the Soeda family relatives appeared at Taiso Temple. They enumerated each item—from Sōemon’s neglect of household management and his servants’ idleness to the collapse of the family business—and further reported that his daughter Osayo had fallen suddenly ill. Then they petitioned the Head Priest for Sōemon’s return to his home.
This occurred almost exactly when Sōemon Yamakiya had lamented before the Head Priest his final recourse, having reached the extremes of ruin and exhaustion.
Of course, his feelings of avoidance toward the daughters he had left at home and his disgust toward the materialistic family business had been reiterated as usual.

However, the shame concerning the mural was what the Head Priest first came to hear of.
Until he could bring himself to endure the pain of confessing it, his desperate urge to plead with the Head Priest had already reached its extremity.
The Head Priest earnestly listened to both detailed explanations and entreaties.
And regarding all future matters, he compelled both parties to firmly pledge they would proceed under his direct guidance.

"Do not avoid reality; resolutely confront it and thereby apprehend life’s fundamental essence."
"The true strength in living emerges from there."

The Head Priest translated this into plain terms and made Sōemon Yamakiya grasp it.
As a concrete measure for this, Sōemon Yamakiya’s living quarters were relocated from the temple’s flower fields to a place immediately beside his disabled daughters.
It was an injunction to cast aside self-indulgent delusions, confront the disability, and gaze unflinchingly upon the reality of that disability.

“The proper harnessing of desires.”

The Head Priest translated this into plain terms and explained it to all the Soeda family relatives.
Immediately, he had Sōemon Yamakiya himself and all his relatives search in every direction for a suitable second wife.

"Fulfill the mission of your individuality; to a family business suited to your own capabilities, there exists no distinction between good and evil or high and low."

Since this principle was now being applied to Sōemon Yamakiya, he had no choice but to urgently return to his family business.

In early summer of that year, Sōemon Yamakiya took his newly wedded second wife and two disabled daughters to a certain famous hot spring in a distant province. Through a stay of over a month, his health and Osayo’s post-illness health fully recovered. He resumed the family business once more. The family fortune rapidly returned to its former state. The temple’s flower garden bloomed every year in all four seasons. In the early summer of a certain year—a year when the peonies displayed an especially magnificent splendor—the Soeda family’s flower banquet was held there. Within the curtained enclosure, at the head sat the Head Priest of Taiso Temple; flanking Sōemon Yamakiya himself on either side, two disabled daughters sat dressed in fine attire; further down, his refined middle-aged second wife sat demurely. In addition to all the relatives, many villagers were also invited.

However, Sōemon had grown far more silent than before and had grown thin—yet this did not signify the decline of old age.
Beneath his taut outer skin, a vividly calm strength shone with a lonely light.

(Afterword)

As the imperial age waned, human sensibilities and emotions—culturally overripe—developed to excess. While people pursued carnal pleasures through refined aesthetic ideals in practice, true to the adage that revelry's zenith breeds sorrow, their self-loathing anxieties inversely intensified a sublime yearning for spiritual truth.

To reconcile these dual desires, Buddhism itself underwent various transformations. Among these developments, religious implements appealing directly to the senses proved most timely—satisfying carnal aesthetic cravings while simultaneously offering glimpses of eternal spiritual repose through their material forms.

These were sensual peerless beauties that simultaneously evoked boundlessness; here, apsara-type imagery—such as Kisshōten, Geigiten, and Benzaiten—came to dominate over traditional Buddha and Bodhisattva statues in popularity. Several survive today, compelling us to contemplate how profoundly they embody humanity’s contradictions yet unified totality. However, the female Bodhisattva that Sōemon Yamakiya beheld at Taiso Temple, while undeniably possessing a Bodhisattva’s posture and bearing in form, was likely an old painting genealogically linked to precisely those aforementioned era’s apsara-type images in artistic intent.