Ancient Tales and Folk-Lore of Japan | Page 2

Ko San remained faithful to her unknown lover, though she sorrowed greatly at his non-appearance; in fact, she secretly suffered so much thereby that she sickened, and three months later died, to the grief of all who knew her and to her family's serious distress.
On the day of O Ko San's funeral her mother was seeing to the last attentions paid to corpses, and smoothing her hair with the golden pin given to Ko San or O Ko??1 by Saito in behalf of his son K?noj?. When the body had been placed in its coffin, the mother thrust the pin into the girl's hair, saying:
'Dearest daughter, this is the pin given as a memento to you by your betrothed, K?noj?. Let it be a pledge to bind your spirits in death, as it would have been in life; and may you enjoy endless happiness, I pray.'
In thus praying, no doubt, O Ko's mother thought that K?noj? also must be dead, and that their spirits would meet; but it was not so, for two months after these events K?noj? himself, now eighteen years of age, turned up at Sendai, calling first on his father's old friend Hasunuma.
'Oh, the bitterness and misfortune of it all!' said the latter. 'Only two months ago my daughter Ko died. Had you but come before then she would have been alive now. But you never even sent a message; we never heard a word of your father or of your mother. Where did you all go when you left here? Tell me the whole story.'
'Sir,' answered the grief-stricken K?noj?, 'what you tell me of the death of your daughter, whom I had hoped to marry, sickens my heart, for I, like herself, had been faithful, and I hoped to marry her, and thought daily of her. When my father took my family away from Sendai, he took us to Yedo; and afterwards we went north to
[paragraph continues] Yezo Island, where my father lost his money and became poor. He died in poverty. My poor mother did not long survive him. I have been working hard to try and earn enough to marry your daughter Ko; but I have not made more than enough to pay my journey down to Sendai. I felt it my duty to come and tell you of my family's misfortune and my own.'
The old samurai was much touched by this story. He saw that the most unfortunate of all had been K?noj?.
'K?noj?,' he said, 'often have I thought and wondered to myself, Were you honest or were you not? Now I find that you have been truly faithful, and honest to your father's pledge. But you should have written--you should have written! Because you did not do so, sometimes we thought, my wife and I, that you must be dead; but we kept this thought to ourselves, and never told Ko San. Go to our Butsudan;??1 open the doors of it, and burn a joss stick to Ko San's mortuary tablet. It will please her spirit. She longed and longed for your return, and died of that sane longing--for love of you. Her spirit will rejoice to know that you have come back for her.'
K?noj? did as he was bid.
Bowing reverently three times before the mortuary tablet of O Ko San, he muttered a few words of prayer in her behalf, and then lit the incense-stick and placed it before the tablet.
After this exhibition of sincerity Hasunuma told the young fellow that he should consider him as an adopted son, and that he must live with them. He could have the small house in the garden. In any case, whatever his plans for the future might be, he must remain with them for the present.
This was a generous offer, worthy of a samurai. K?noj? gratefully accepted it, and became one of the family. About a fortnight afterwards he settled himself in the little house at the end of the garden. Hasunuma, his wife, and their second daughter, O Kei, had gone, by command of the Daimio, to the Higan, a religious ceremony held in March; Hasunuma also always worshipped at his ancestral tombs at this time. Towards the dusk of evening they were returning in their palanquins. K?noj? stood at the gate to see them pass, as was proper and respectful. The old samurai passed first, and was followed by his wife's palanquin, and then by that of O Kei. As this last passed the gate K?noj? thought he heard something fall, causing a metallic sound. After the palanquin had passed he picked it up without any particular attention.
It was the golden hairpin; but of course, though K?noj?'s father had told him of the pin, K?noj? had no idea that this was it, and therefore he thought nothing more than that it