Bab Bab 4 · A Dead Secret

A long time ago, in the province of Tamba (1), there lived a rich

merchant named Inamuraya Gensuké. He had a daughter called O-Sono. As

she was very clever and pretty, he thought it would be a pity to let

her grow up with only such teaching as the country-teachers could give

her: so he sent her, in care of some trusty attendants, to Kyōto, that

she might be trained in the polite accomplishments taught to the ladies

of the capital. After she had thus been educated, she was married to a

friend of her father’s family—a merchant named Nagaraya;—and she lived

happily with him for nearly four years. They had one child,—a boy. But

O-Sono fell ill and died, in the fourth year after her marriage.

On the night after the funeral of O-Sono, her little son said that his

mamma had come back, and was in the room upstairs. She had smiled at

him, but would not talk to him: so he became afraid, and ran away. Then

some of the family went upstairs to the room which had been O-Sono’s;

and they were startled to see, by the light of a small lamp which had

been kindled before a shrine in that room, the figure of the dead

mother. She appeared as if standing in front of a _tansu_, or chest of

drawers, that still contained her ornaments and her wearing-apparel.

Her head and shoulders could be very distinctly seen; but from the

waist downwards the figure thinned into invisibility;—it was like an

imperfect reflection of her, and transparent as a shadow on water.

Then the folk were afraid, and left the room. Below they consulted

together; and the mother of O-Sono’s husband said: “A woman is fond of

her small things; and O-Sono was much attached to her belongings.

Perhaps she has come back to look at them. Many dead persons will do

that,—unless the things be given to the parish-temple. If we present

O-Sono’s robes and girdles to the temple, her spirit will probably find

rest.”

It was agreed that this should be done as soon as possible. So on the

following morning the drawers were emptied; and all of O-Sono’s

ornaments and dresses were taken to the temple. But she came back the

next night, and looked at the _tansu_ as before. And she came back also

on the night following, and the night after that, and every night;—and

the house became a house of fear.

The mother of O-Sono’s husband then went to the parish-temple, and told

the chief priest all that had happened, and asked for ghostly counsel.

The temple was a Zen temple; and the head-priest was a learned old man,

known as Daigen Oshō. He said: “There must be something about which she

is anxious, in or near that _tansu_.”—“But we emptied all the drawers,”

replied the woman;—“there is nothing in the _tansu_.”—“Well,” said

Daigen Oshō, “to-night I shall go to your house, and keep watch in that

room, and see what can be done. You must give orders that no person

shall enter the room while I am watching, unless I call.”

After sundown, Daigen Oshō went to the house, and found the room made

ready for him. He remained there alone, reading the sûtras; and nothing

appeared until after the Hour of the Rat.[1] Then the figure of O-Sono

suddenly outlined itself in front of the _tansu_. Her face had a

wistful look; and she kept her eyes fixed upon the _tansu_.

The priest uttered the holy formula prescribed in such cases, and then,

addressing the figure by the _kaimyō_[2] of O-Sono, said:—“I have come

here in order to help you. Perhaps in that _tansu_ there is something

about which you have reason to feel anxious. Shall I try to find it for

you?” The shadow appeared to give assent by a slight motion of the

head; and the priest, rising, opened the top drawer. It was empty.

Successively he opened the second, the third, and the fourth drawer;—he

searched carefully behind them and beneath them;—he carefully examined

the interior of the chest. He found nothing. But the figure remained

gazing as wistfully as before. “What can she want?” thought the priest.

Suddenly it occurred to him that there might be something hidden under

the paper with which the drawers were lined. He removed the lining of

the first drawer:—nothing! He removed the lining of the second and

third drawers:—still nothing. But under the lining of the lowermost

drawer he found—a letter. “Is this the thing about which you have been

troubled?” he asked. The shadow of the woman turned toward him,—her

faint gaze fixed upon the letter. “Shall I burn it for you?” he asked.

She bowed before him. “It shall be burned in the temple this very

morning,” he promised;—“and no one shall read it, except myself.” The

figure smiled and vanished.

Dawn was breaking as the priest descended the stairs, to find the

family waiting anxiously below. “Do not be anxious,” he said to them:

“She will not appear again.” And she never did.

The letter was burned. It was a love-letter written to O-Sono in the

time of her studies at Kyōto. But the priest alone knew what was in it;

and the secret died with him.

YUKI-ONNA

In a village of Musashi Province (1), there lived two woodcutters:

Mosaku and Minokichi. At the time of which I am speaking, Mosaku was an

old man; and Minokichi, his apprentice, was a lad of eighteen years.

Every day they went together to a forest situated about five miles from

their village. On the way to that forest there is a wide river to

cross; and there is a ferry-boat. Several times a bridge was built

where the ferry is; but the bridge was each time carried away by a

flood. No common bridge can resist the current there when the river

rises.

Mosaku and Minokichi were on their way home, one very cold evening,

when a great snowstorm overtook them. They reached the ferry; and they

found that the boatman had gone away, leaving his boat on the other

side of the river. It was no day for swimming; and the woodcutters took

shelter in the ferryman’s hut,—thinking themselves lucky to find any

shelter at all. There was no brazier in the hut, nor any place in which

to make a fire: it was only a two-mat[1] hut, with a single door, but

no window. Mosaku and Minokichi fastened the door, and lay down to

rest, with their straw rain-coats over them. At first they did not feel

very cold; and they thought that the storm would soon be over.

The old man almost immediately fell asleep; but the boy, Minokichi, lay

awake a long time, listening to the awful wind, and the continual

slashing of the snow against the door. The river was roaring; and the

hut swayed and creaked like a junk at sea. It was a terrible storm; and

the air was every moment becoming colder; and Minokichi shivered under

his rain-coat. But at last, in spite of the cold, he too fell asleep.

He was awakened by a showering of snow in his face. The door of the hut

had been forced open; and, by the snow-light (_yuki-akari_), he saw a

woman in the room,—a woman all in white. She was bending above Mosaku,

and blowing her breath upon him;—and her breath was like a bright white

smoke. Almost in the same moment she turned to Minokichi, and stooped

over him. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any

sound. The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her

face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful,—though

her eyes made him afraid. For a little time she continued to look at

him;—then she smiled, and she whispered:—“I intended to treat you like

the other man. But I cannot help feeling some pity for you,—because you

are so young... You are a pretty boy, Minokichi; and I will not hurt

you now. But, if you ever tell anybody—even your own mother—about what

you have seen this night, I shall know it; and then I will kill you...

Remember what I say!”

[Illustration] BLOWING HER BREATH UPON HIM

With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway.

Then he found himself able to move; and he sprang up, and looked out.

But the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the snow was driving

furiously into the hut. Minokichi closed the door, and secured it by

fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had

blown it open;—he thought that he might have been only dreaming, and

might have mistaken the gleam of the snow-light in the doorway for the

figure of a white woman: but he could not be sure. He called to Mosaku,

and was frightened because the old man did not answer. He put out his

hand in the dark, and touched Mosaku’s face, and found that it was ice!

Mosaku was stark and dead...

By dawn the storm was over; and when the ferryman returned to his

station, a little after sunrise, he found Minokichi lying senseless

beside the frozen body of Mosaku. Minokichi was promptly cared for, and

soon came to himself; but he remained a long time ill from the effects

of the cold of that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also

by the old man’s death; but he said nothing about the vision of the

woman in white. As soon as he got well again, he returned to his

calling,—going alone every morning to the forest, and coming back at

nightfall with his bundles of wood, which his mother helped him to

sell.

One evening, in the winter of the following year, as he was on his way

home, he overtook a girl who happened to be traveling by the same road.

She was a tall, slim girl, very good-looking; and she answered

Minokichi’s greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of

a song-bird. Then he walked beside her; and they began to talk. The

girl said that her name was O-Yuki;[2] that she had lately lost both of

her parents; and that she was going to Yedo (2), where she happened to

have some poor relations, who might help her to find a situation as a

servant. Minokichi soon felt charmed by this strange girl; and the more

that he looked at her, the handsomer she appeared to be. He asked her

whether she was yet betrothed; and she answered, laughingly, that she

was free. Then, in her turn, she asked Minokichi whether he was

married, or pledged to marry; and he told her that, although he had

only a widowed mother to support, the question of an “honorable

daughter-in-law” had not yet been considered, as he was very young...

After these confidences, they walked on for a long while without

speaking; but, as the proverb declares, _Ki ga aréba, mé mo kuchi hodo

ni mono wo iu:_ “When the wish is there, the eyes can say as much as

the mouth.” By the time they reached the village, they had become very

much pleased with each other; and then Minokichi asked O-Yuki to rest

awhile at his house. After some shy hesitation, she went there with

him; and his mother made her welcome, and prepared a warm meal for her.

O-Yuki behaved so nicely that Minokichi’s mother took a sudden fancy to

her, and persuaded her to delay her journey to Yedo. And the natural

end of the matter was that Yuki never went to Yedo at all. She remained

in the house, as an “honorable daughter-in-law.”

O-Yuki proved a very good daughter-in-law. When Minokichi’s mother came

to die,—some five years later,—her last words were words of affection

and praise for the wife of her son. And O-Yuki bore Minokichi ten

children, boys and girls,—handsome children all of them, and very fair

of skin.

The country-folk thought O-Yuki a wonderful person, by nature different

from themselves. Most of the peasant-women age early; but O-Yuki, even

after having become the mother of ten children, looked as young and

fresh as on the day when she had first come to the village.

One night, after the children had gone to sleep, O-Yuki was sewing by

the light of a paper lamp; and Minokichi, watching her, said:—

“To see you sewing there, with the light on your face, makes me think

of a strange thing that happened when I was a lad of eighteen. I then

saw somebody as beautiful and white as you are now—indeed, she was very

like you.”...

Without lifting her eyes from her work, O-Yuki responded:—

“Tell me about her... Where did you see her?”

Then Minokichi told her about the terrible night in the ferryman’s

hut,—and about the White Woman that had stooped above him, smiling and

whispering,—and about the silent death of old Mosaku. And he said:—

“Asleep or awake, that was the only time that I saw a being as

beautiful as you. Of course, she was not a human being; and I was

afraid of her,—very much afraid,—but she was so white!... Indeed, I

have never been sure whether it was a dream that I saw, or the Woman of

the Snow.”...

O-Yuki flung down her sewing, and arose, and bowed above Minokichi

where he sat, and shrieked into his face:—

“It was I—I—I! Yuki it was! And I told you then that I would kill you

if you ever said one word about it!... But for those children asleep

there, I would kill you this moment! And now you had better take very,

very good care of them; for if ever they have reason to complain of

you, I will treat you as you deserve!”...

Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying of

wind;—then she melted into a bright white mist that spired to the

roof-beams, and shuddered away through the smoke-hole.... Never again

was she seen.