{"collection":"shi","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/shi/atfj/atfj03.htm","path":"shi/atfj/atfj03.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/shi/atfj/atfj03.htm","text":"Ancient Tales and Folk-lore of Japan, by Richard Gordon Smith, [1918]\n \n \nClick to enlarge\n2. The Spirit of O Ko appears to Konojo as O Kei San\nUP in the northern city of Sendai, whence come the best of Japanese soldiers, there lived a samurai named Hasunuma.\nHasunuma was rich and hospitable, and consequently much thought of and well liked. Some thirty-five years ago his wife presented him with a beautiful daughter, their first child, whom they called 'Ko,' which means 'Small' when applied to a child, much as we say 'Little Mary or Little Jane.' Her full name was really 'Hasu-ko,' which means 'Little Lily'; but here we will call her 'Ko' for short.\nExactly on the same date, 'Saito,' one of Hasunuma's friends and also a samurai, had the good fortune to have a son. The fathers decided that, being such old friends, they would wed their children to each other when old enough to marry; they were very happy over the idea, and so were their wives. To make the engagement of the\nbabies more binding, Saito handed to Hasunuma a golden hairpin which had long been in his family, and said:\n'Here, my old friend, take this pin. It shall be a token of betrothal from my son, whose name shall be K\u00f4noj\u00f4, to your little daughter Ko, both of whom are now aged two weeks only. May they live long and happy lives together.'\nHasunuma took the pin, and handed it to his wife to keep; then they drank sak\u00e9 to the health of each other, and to the bride and bridegroom of some twenty years thence.\nA few months after this Saito, in some way, caused displeasure to his feudal lord, and, being dismissed from service, left Sendai with his family\u2014whither no one knew.\nSeventeen years later O Ko San was, with one exception, the most beautiful girl in all Sendai; the exception was her sister, O Kei, just a year younger, and as beautiful as herself.\nMany were the suitors for O Ko's hand; but she would have none of them, being faithful to the engagement made for her by her father when she was a baby. True, she had never seen her betrothed, and (which seemed more curious) neither she nor her family had ever once heard of the Saito family since they had left Sendai, over sixteen years before; but that was no reason why she, a Japanese girl, should break the word of her father, and therefore O 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.\nOn 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\u00f4noj\u00f4. When the body had been placed in its coffin, the mother thrust the pin into the girl's hair, saying:\n'Dearest daughter, this is the pin given as a memento to you by your betrothed, K\u00f4noj\u00f4. 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.'\nIn thus praying, no doubt, O Ko's mother thought that K\u00f4noj\u00f4 also must be dead, and that their spirits would meet; but it was not so, for two months after these events K\u00f4noj\u00f4 himself, now eighteen years of age, turned up at Sendai, calling first on his father's old friend Hasunuma.\n'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.'\n'Sir,' answered the grief-stricken K\u00f4noj\u00f4, '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\n[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.'\nThe old samurai was much touched by this story. He saw that the most unfortunate of all had been K\u00f4noj\u00f4.\n'K\u00f4noj\u00f4,' 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\u2014you 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\u2014for love of you. Her spirit will rejoice to know that you have come back for her.'\nK\u00f4noj\u00f4 did as he was bid.\nBowing 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.\nAfter 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\nthe small house in the garden. In any case, whatever his plans for the future might be, he must remain with them for the present.\nThis was a generous offer, worthy of a samurai. K\u00f4noj\u00f4 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\u00f4noj\u00f4 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\u00f4noj\u00f4 thought he heard something fall, causing a metallic sound. After the palanquin had passed he picked it up without any particular attention.\nIt was the golden hairpin; but of course, though K\u00f4noj\u00f4's father had told him of the pin, K\u00f4noj\u00f4 had no idea that this was it, and therefore he thought nothing more than that it must be O Kei San's. He went back to his little house, closed it for the night, and was about to retire when he heard a knock at the door. 'Who is there?' he shouted. 'What do you want?' There came no answer, and K\u00f4noj\u00f4 lay down on his bed, thinking himself to have been mistaken. But there came another knock, louder than the first; and K\u00f4noj\u00f4 jumped out of bed, and lit the ando. 1 'If not a fox or a badger,'\nthought he, 'it must be some evil spirit come to disturb me.'\nOn opening the door, with the ando in one hand, and a stick in the other, K\u00f4noj\u00f4 looked out into the dark, and there, to his astonishment, he beheld a vision of female beauty the like of which he had never seen before. 'Who are you, and what do you want?' quoth he.\n'I am O Kei San, O Ko's younger sister,' answered the vision. 'Though you have not seen me, I have several times seen you, and I have fallen so madly in love with you that I can think of nothing else but you. When you picked up my golden pin to-night on our return, I had dropped it to serve as an excuse to come to you and knock. You must love me in return; for otherwise I must die!'\nThis heated and outrageous declaration scandalised poor K\u00f4noj\u00f4. Moreover, he felt that it would be doing his kind host Hasunuma a great injustice to be receiving his younger daughter at this hour of the night and make love to her. He expressed himself forcibly in these terms.\n'If you will not love me as I love you, then I shall take my revenge,' said O Kei, 'by telling my father that you got me to come here by making love to me, and that you then insulted me.'\nPoor K\u00f4noj\u00f4! He was in a nice mess. What he feared most of all was that the girl would do as she said, that the samurai would believe her, and that he would be a disgraced and villainous person. He gave way, therefore, to the girl's request. Night after night she visited him, until nearly a month had passed. During\nthis time K\u00f4noj\u00f4 had learned to love dearly the beautiful O Kei. Talking to her one evening, he said:\n'My dearest O Kei, I do not like this secret love of ours. Is it not better that we go away? If I asked your father to give you to me in marriage he would refuse, because I was betrothed to your sister.'\n'Yes,' answered O Kei: 'that is what, I also have been wishing. Let us leave this very night, and go to Ishinomaki, the place where (you have told me) lives a faithful servant of your late father's, called Kinzo.'\n'Yes: Kinzo is his name, and Ishinomaki is the place. Let us start as soon as possible.'\nHaving thrust a few clothes into a bag, they started secretly and late that night, and duly arrived at their destination. Kinzo was delighted to receive them, and pleased to show how hospitable he could be to his late master's son and the beautiful lady.\nThey lived very happily for a year. Then one day O Kei said:\n'I think we ought to return, to my parents now. If they were angry with us at first they will have got over the worst of it. We have never written. They must be getting anxious as to my fate as they grow older. Yes: we ought to go.'\nK\u00f4noj\u00f4 agreed. Long had he felt the injustice he was doing Hasunuma.\nNext day they found themselves back in Sendai, and K\u00f4noj\u00f4 could not help feeling a little nervous as he approached the samurai's house. They stopped at the outer gate, and O Kei said to K\u00f4noj\u00f4, 'I think it will be better for you to go in and see my father and mother\nfirst. If they get very angry show them this golden pin.\nK\u00f4noj\u00f4 stepped boldly up to the door, and asked for an interview with the samurai.\nBefore the servant had time to return, K\u00f4noj\u00f4 heard the old man shout, 'K\u00f4noj\u00f4 San! Why, of course! Bring the boy in at once,' and he himself came out to welcome him.\n'My dear boy,' said the samurai, 'right glad am I to see you back again. I am sorry you did not find your life with us good enough. You might have said you were going. But there\u2014I suppose you take after your father in these matters, and prefer to disappear mysteriously. You are welcome back, at all events.'\nK\u00f4noj\u00f4 was astonished at this speech, and answered:\n'But, sir, I have come to beg pardon for my sin.'\n'What sin have you committed?' queried the samurai in great surprise, and drawing himself up, in a dignified manner.\nK\u00f4noj\u00f4 then gave a full account of his love-affair with O Kei. From beginning to end he told it all, and as he proceeded the samurai showed signs of impatience.\n'Do not joke, sir! My daughter O Kei San is not a subject for jokes and untruths. She has been as one dead for over a year\u2014so ill that we have with difficulty forced gruel into her mouth. Moreover, she has spoken no word and shown no sign of life.'\n'I am neither stating what is untrue nor joking,' said K\u00f4noj\u00f4. 'If you but send outside, you will find O Kei in the palanquin, in which I left her.'\nA servant was immediately sent to see, and returned,\nstating that there was neither palanquin nor any one at the gate.\nK\u00f4noj\u00f4, seeing that the samurai was now beginning to look perplexed and angry, drew the golden pin from his clothes, saying:\n'See! if you doubt me and think I am lying, here is the pin which O Kei told me to give you!'\n'Bik-ku-ri-shi-ta-!' 1 exclaimed O Kei's mother. 'How came this pin into your hands? I myself put it into Ko San's coffin just before it was closed.'\nThe samurai and K\u00f4noj\u00f4 stared at each other, and the mother at both. Neither knew what to think, or what to say or do. Imagine the general surprise when the sick O Kei walked into the room, having risen from her bed as if she had never been ill for a moment. She was the picture of health and beauty.\n'How is this?' asked the samurai, almost shouting. 'How is it, O Kei, that you have come from your sickbed dressed and with your hair done and looking as if you had never known a moment of illness?'\n'I am not O Kei, but the spirit of O Ko,' was the answer. 'I was most unfortunate in dying before the return of K\u00f4noj\u00f4 San, for had I lived until then I should have become quite well and been married to him. As it was, my spirit was unhappy. It took the form of my dear sister O Kei, and for a year has lived happily in her body with K\u00f4noj\u00f4. It is appeased now, and about to take its real rest.'\n'There is one condition, however, K\u00f4noj\u00f4, which I must make,' said the girl, turning to him. 'You must\nmarry my sister O Kei. If you do this my spirit will rest truly in peace, and then O Kei will become well and strong. Will you promise to marry O Kei?'\nThe old samurai, his wife, and K\u00f4noj\u00f4 were all amazed at this. The appearance of the girl was that of O Kei; but the voice and manners were those of O Ko. Then, there was the golden hairpin as further proof. The mother knew it well. She had placed it in Ko's hair just before the tub coffin was closed. Nobody could undeceive her on that point.\n'But,' said the samurai at last, 'O Ko has been dead and buried for more than a year now. That you should appear to us puzzles us all. Why should you trouble us so?'\n'I have explained already,' resumed the girl. 'My spirit could not rest until it had lived with K\u00f4noj\u00f4, whom it knew to be faithful. It has done this now, and is prepared to rest. My only desire is to see K\u00f4noj\u00f4 marry my sister.'\nHasunuma, his wife, and K\u00f4noj\u00f4 held a consultation. They were quite prepared that O Kei should marry, and K\u00f4noj\u00f4 did not object.\nAll things being settled, the ghost-girl held out her hand to K\u00f4noj\u00f4 saying:\n'This is the last time you will touch the hand of O Ko. Farewell, my dear parents! Farewell to you all! I am about to pass away.'\nThen she fainted away, and seemed dead, and remained thus for half an hour; while the others, overcome with the strange and weird things which they had seen and heard, sat round her, hardly uttering a word.\nAt the end of half an hour the body came to life, and standing up, said:\n'Dear parents, have no more fear for me. I am perfectly well again; but I have no idea how I got down from my sick-room in this costume, or how it is that I feel so well.'\nSeveral questions were put to her; but it was quite evident that O Kei knew nothing of what had happened\u2014nothing of the spirit of O Ko San, or of the golden hairpin!\nA week later she and K\u00f4noj\u00f4 were married, and the golden hairpin was given to a shrine at Shiogama, to which, until quite recently, crowds used to go and worship.\n1:1 This story savours of 'Botan D\u00f4r\u00f4,' or Peony Lantern story, told both by Mitford and by Lafcadio Hearn. In this instance, however, the spirit of the dead sister passes into the body of the living one, assumes her form, leaves her sick and ill for over a year, and then allows her to reappear as if she had never been ill at all. It is the first story of its kind I have heard.\n3:1 'O' means Honourable Miss; 'San' means Miss. Either will do; but Ko is the name.\n4:1 Family shrine.\n5:1 Lamp.\n9:1 An exclamation, such as 'Great Scot!'","title":"Ancient Tales and Folk-lore of Japan: I. The Golden Hairpin","type":"page"}