The Yotsuya Kwaidan | Page 5

at least will inspire respect.
THE YOTSUYA KWAIDAN OR O'IWA INARI
CHAPTER I
O'MINO AND DENSUK��
Yotsuya is a suburb--at the extreme west of Edo-To[u]kyo[u]. Its streets are narrow and winding, though hilly withal; especially on the southern edge toward the Aoyama district, still devoted to cemeteries and palaces, sepulchres whited without and within. Echizenbori would be at the other extremity of the great city. It fronts eastward on the bank of the Sumidagawa. The populous and now poverty stricken districts of Honjo[u] and Fukagawa beyond the wide stream, with other qualities, deprive it of any claim of going to extremes. In fact Echizenbori is a very staid and solid section of Edo-To[u]kyo[u]. Its streets are narrow; and many are the small shops to purvey for the daily needs of its inhabitants. But these rows of shops are sandwiched in between great clumps of stores, partly warehouses and partly residences of the owners thereof. These stores line the canals of Echizenbori, water courses crowded with junks carrying their ten tons, or their hundreds of tons, of freight--precious cargoes of rice to go into these stores in bulk, of shoyu (soy) by the hundred kegs, of sakarazumi (charcoal from Shimosa) by the thousand tawara (bale), of fish dried and fresh, of takuan or daikon (the huge white radish) pickled in salt and rice bran, of all the odds and ends of material in the gross which go to make up the necessities of living in a great city. If Echizenbori then can make its show of poverty, and very little display of wealth, it is not one of the poor quarters of this capital city of Nippon.
Crossing the Takabashi from Hacho[u]bori and plunging down the narrow street opposite; a short turn to the right, a plunge down another narrow street and a turn to the right; one comes to the high cement wall, in its modernness of type a most unusual attachment to shrine or temple. The gate is narrow and formal; almost like the entrance to a garden or smaller burying ground. Within all is changed from the busy outside world. The area inclosed is small--perhaps a square of a hundred and fifty feet--but marked in lines by a maze of lanterns of the cheap iron variety, set on cheap wooden posts. On the right is seen a minor shrine or two dedicated to the Inari goddess. On the left is a small building devoted to votive offerings, the crude and the more elaborate. The most striking is the offering of a little geisha lady, and portrays an heroic scene of early days. There are other portraitures, in which perhaps a wandering lover is seen as a hero, to the lady's eyes, of these later times. On the outside of the structure are posted up by the hundred pictures of once woebegone ladies, now rejoicing in the potent influence of the Tamiya shrine to restore to them the strayed affections of husband or lover. Next in line is an open, shed-like structure. It is a poor chance if here the casual visitor does not encounter one or two of the petitioners, patiently trotting round in a circle from front to back, and reciting their prayers in this accomplishment of "the hundred turns." Just opposite, and close by, is the shrine itself. This is in part a massive store-house set back in the domestic structure, with the shrine of the Inari facing the visitor. The floor space at the sides and before it often is piled high with tubs of shoyu and sak��, with bundles of charcoal, such negotiable articles as the wealthier shopkeeper can offer to the mighty lady; and long tresses of hair of women too poor to offer anything else, or wise enough to know that a woman could make no greater sacrifice. And is not the object of their worship a woman? Numerous are these severed strands. Entering the shrine and passing the pleasant spoken warden at its entrance, peddling his charms and giving advice where often it is sadly needed--perhaps the more valuable of his two public duties--to the left within is the Oku-no-In, the inner shrine containing the ihai or memorial tablet of O'Iwa. That the shrine is popular and wealthy; that the lady is feared, venerated, and her dreadful powers much sought after; this is plain to the eye in the crowded elaborateness of this inner holy place of the larger sacred structure.
Now Echizenbori is not a particularly old quarter of the city. Long after Edo was established, the city, step by step, fought its way down to the river; filling in lagoons and swamps, and driving their waters into the canals which were to furnish very largely the means of communication for its traffic. Yotsuya on the contrary is old. Its poverty is of later date. In