Nyoeghau

Once upon a time, there was an ebusshi called Ryoshu. Because there was fire coming from the house next door, and the wind blew over and surrounded his house, he ran away to the main road. Paintings of Buddhas which he was commissioned to paint was still inside. And also, his unclothed wife and children were still inside. He satisfiedly escaped outside without thinking about them, and ended up standing in the opposite side. As he looked, the fire had already moved to his own house, and he watched from the opposite side until smoke and fire were rising. As people thought this was surprising and came to ask if he was alright, he was still calm. While people said, “why!”, he stood on the opposite side, watched his house burn, nodded his head in deep understanding, and smiled from time to time. “Great! What a revelation this is! This shall be the painting I haven’t been able to do well for many years!”, he said, and the people who had come to ask him said, “how could he just stand like this! How astonishing! Is he possessed by something?” He mockingly laughed and said, “what thing should possess me? For many years, I have been painting the fire of Fudo Myoo badly. Now that I see it, I have known that it should burn exactly like this. This is the very revelation. If I were to devote myself into this profession and make a living in the world, even if I could only paint Buddha well, I could end up having hundreds and thousands of houses. It is exactly because the likes of you don’t have any noteworthy skill that you even regret over things.”

It was perhaps from this time on that people called it “Ryoshu’s flickering Fudo” and all praise it highly.

He firmly stepped his stirrups and stood up, and announced his name in a great voice, “you must have heard of Kiso the Young Man before; now you must be seeing him right in front of your eyes, the Chief of the Left Stables and Governor of the Iyo Province, General of Asahi, Minamoto no Yoshinaka. I heard that you are Ichijo no Jiro from Kai, and we are exactly good opponents for each other. Defeat me and let Yorimoto see!”. He shouted and raced his horse.

Ichijo no Jiro said, “the one who announced his name was the Great General. Don’t overlook anyone, people; don’t let anyone escape, you young samurais. Attack!” And they surrounded Kiso with a big crowd, and each one wanted to kill Kiso themselves.

Because the days were becoming very long and idle, Genji departed for that small fenced house, going under the cover of the heavily-misted dusk. When he let the servants return and peeked with Koremitsu, they saw that just in the west direction, there was a nun who was humbly placing a small Buddhist statue and praying. It seemed like she raised the blind a little and offered flowers. The nun, who was leaning on a pillar, sitting, and reading the sutra which she had put on the armrest, did not look like an ordinary person. She was about over forty; her face was very white and elegant; although her body was slim, her face was chubby. Seeing the place around her eyebrows and the end of her hair cut to shoulder height in a seemingly beautiful way, Genji was deeply moved and said, “rather than being long, this is also fairly superb and fashionable.” There were two neat servants, and then, children were going in and out, playing. Inside, Genji saw that one girl, who seemed to be around ten, wearing a well-worn white underrobe, a yamabuki-coloured robe and such, was running here. It would be inappropriate to compare her with the other children he had seen, and he could see that she would become an extremely beautiful woman. She stood with her hair, like an opened fan, swinging in the air, and her face rubbed deliberately in red.

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Around this time, after dusk and around midnight, the vicinity of the house was shining throughout, even more brightly than the day; it was about ten times the brightness of the full moon, to the extent that you could see somebody’s pores. People rode on clouds and descended from the heavens, and they were standing in line about five feet above the ground. Seeing this, the people inside and outside the house, as if their souls were possessed by something, lost their fighting spirits. When they barely recollected themselves, even though they wanted to raise bows and arrows, their hands lost strength and were weak and limp. Even though there was a brave one who put up with his fear and tried a shot, the arrow flew elsewhere; now even if they had gone wild they could not fight, and they were totally dazed, staring at each other.

Close to the day of full moon of the Eighth Month, Princess Kaguya came out to sit under the moon, and wept with such profound sorrow, that she did not even avoid from being seen by others. Seeing this, her parents also became unsettled, and asked what the matter was. Princess Kaguya said in a crying voice, “Although I thought of telling this to you, I feared that it would make you confused and bothered, so I ended up letting time pass. Now I think that, could it be hidden in this way? No. So it is exactly that I shall finally speak it out. I do not belong to the people of this country; I belong to that of the Moon Palace. Yet because of a vow from a long time ago, I came to this world. Because now is time to return, on this day of full moon, people from that state that I came from shall come to take me back. Because it is sad to think that it would make you sorrowful that I should not avoid it and leave with them, I have been grieving since spring.”