Yam Gruel

This must have happened either toward the end of the Genkei era or at the beginning of Ninna. In either case, the exact period plays no especially important part in the story. It is enough if the reader simply knows that the background is the distant past of the Heian court. At that time, among the samurai retainers serving Fujiwara no Mototsune, the Regent, there was a Fifth Rank officer known only as So-and-so.

I would much prefer to give his proper name instead of writing “So-and-so,” but unfortunately the old records do not preserve it. Most likely he was in fact too ordinary a man to deserve being remembered. Writers of old records, after all, seem not to have taken much interest in ordinary people or ordinary events. In that respect they differ considerably from Japanese naturalist writers. Court-period novelists were not, perhaps, such idlers as one might think. At any rate, among the samurai serving Fujiwara no Mototsune, the Regent, there was a Fifth Rank officer called So-and-so. He is the hero of this story.

The Fifth Rank officer was a remarkably unprepossessing man. First of all, he was short. Then he had a red nose and drooping eyes. Needless to say, his mustache was thin. His cheeks were hollow, so that his chin looked unnaturally narrow. His lips... If I were to list everything one by one, there would be no end to it. Our Fifth Rank officer’s appearance was that extraordinarily shabby, and in so unusual a way.

No one knows when or how this man came to serve Mototsune. But it is certain that for a very long time he had worn the same faded-colored suikan robe, the same limp eboshi cap, and gone on performing the same duties day after day without ever tiring of them. Perhaps as a result, no one who saw him now could imagine that he had ever once been young. (He was already past forty.) Instead, one had the feeling that ever since birth he had been standing in the crossroads wind of Suzaku Avenue with that chilly-looking red nose and that token mustache exposed to it. From his master Mototsune down to the cowherd boys, everyone unconsciously believed this without question.

What sort of treatment a man of such appearance received from those around him hardly needs to be written. The men at the guards’ office paid him scarcely more attention than they would a fly. Even the nearly twenty lower attendants, whether of rank or without rank, were astonishingly cold toward his comings and goings. Even when the Fifth Rank officer told them to do something, they never stopped their chatter among themselves. To them, just as the existence of air goes unseen, so his existence did not obstruct their vision. If even the lower attendants were like that, it was only natural that their superiors, such as the chief and the head of the guards’ office, ignored him outright. Toward him they concealed behind impassive expressions an almost childish, pointless malice, and whatever they wished to say they conveyed by gestures alone. That human beings possess language is no accident. Accordingly, there were times when gestures were not enough. But they seemed to think that, when this happened, it was entirely because something was defective in the Fifth Rank officer’s understanding. Then, if their meaning still failed to get across, they would look him up and down from the tip of his crooked, crumpled eboshi to the heel of his fraying straw sandals, and then, with a snort of laughter, abruptly turn their backs on him. And yet the Fifth Rank officer was never angered. He was such a spiritless, timid man that he did not even feel injustice as injustice.

When it came to his fellow samurai, however, they went out of their way to make sport of him. Just as the older ones used his miserable appearance as material for stale jokes, the younger ones also seized on it as practice for the kind of clever banter that passes for wit. Before his face they could discuss his nose, his mustache, his cap, and his robe endlessly without ever tiring of it. Nor was that all. The wife with a split lip from whom he had parted five or six years earlier, and the drunken priest who was said to have had relations with her, were also frequent topics among them. On top of that, they would sometimes play truly nasty tricks. I cannot enumerate them all here. But if I mention that they once drank his bamboo-branch flask of sake and then filled it with urine afterward, the rest can more or less be imagined.

Yet the Fifth Rank officer seemed completely numb to all this ridicule. At least, to outside eyes he appeared so. No matter what was said to him, his expression never changed. Silently stroking his thin mustache, he simply went on doing whatever needed doing. Only when the pranks of his comrades went too far, sticking scraps of paper in his topknot or tying sandals to his sword scabbard, he would make a smile that looked half laugh and half tears and say, “Now, now, you oughtn’t do that.” Anyone who saw that face or heard that voice was struck for a moment by a strange pang of tenderness. (For it was not only this red-nosed Fifth Rank officer whom they were tormenting. It seemed as though someone else they did not know, many such unknown someones, were borrowing his face and voice to reproach them for their heartlessness.) That feeling, however dimly, would seep for an instant into their hearts. Very few, however, kept that feeling for long. Among that small number there was one samurai without rank. He was a young man from Tanba Province, with a soft mustache only just beginning to grow beneath his nose. Naturally, he too had at first despised the red-nosed Fifth Rank officer for no reason, along with everyone else. But one day, after hearing him say, “Now, now, you oughtn’t do that,” he could not get the words out of his mind. From then on, the Fifth Rank officer appeared to him as an entirely different person. Even in that pale, undernourished, vacant-looking face, he could see a “human being” on the verge of tears under the persecution of the world. Whenever this unranked samurai thought of the Fifth Rank officer, it seemed to him that everything in the world suddenly revealed its essential baseness. And at the same time that frostbitten red nose and that countable little mustache somehow seemed to bring a certain consolation to his heart....

But that was true of this one man alone. Aside from such exceptions, the Fifth Rank officer still had to go on living like a dog amid the contempt of those around him. To begin with, he did not possess a single garment worthy of the name. He had one blue-gray suikan and one pair of trousers of the same color, but by now they had faded so badly that they were no longer clearly blue or indigo or navy. The suikan, even so, only showed a slight sag at the shoulders, and the braided cords and chrysanthemum fastenings had gone a dubious color; but the trousers were worn quite beyond the ordinary, especially around the hems. When one saw the thin legs sticking out from them, bare beneath without even under-trousers, one felt, even without being one of his sharp-tongued colleagues, the same shabby discomfort one feels watching a skinny ox pulling the carriage of an impoverished noble. The sword he wore was no more reassuring: the fittings on the hilt looked dubious, and the black lacquer of the scabbard was peeling. And then there was that famous red nose, and the way he dragged his sandals carelessly, hunching his already stooped back still further under the cold sky, glancing greedily right and left as he walked in tiny steps. It was no wonder that even passing peddlers made a fool of him. In fact, something like this once happened....

One day, as the Fifth Rank officer was going along Sanjo Bomon toward Shinsen-en, he noticed six or seven children gathered by the roadside, busy at something. Thinking they might be spinning tops, he peered over from behind. But what they were doing was tying a rope around the neck of a stray mongrel that had wandered there from somewhere and beating and striking it. The timid Fifth Rank officer, though he had often felt sympathy for one thing or another, had never once actually acted on it, always being too conscious of those around him. But this time, because the other party was only children, he felt a little courage. So, forcing as cheerful a smile as he could, he tapped one of the older boys on the shoulder and said, “Come now, have mercy on it. It hurts a dog too when it’s beaten.”

The boy turned around and, looking upward from under his brows, stared contemptuously over the Fifth Rank officer’s figure. He looked at him the way the head of the guards’ office might when his meaning failed to get across to this man. “I didn’t ask for your meddling,” the boy said, taking one step back and curling his arrogant lip. “What’s it to you, red-nose?”

The Fifth Rank officer felt those words strike his face. But it was not in the least because he was angry at being insulted. It was because he felt wretched with shame for having said something he need not have said. Hiding his embarrassment in a painful smile, he silently started off again toward Shinsen-en. Behind him the six or seven children crowded shoulder to shoulder, making faces and sticking out their tongues. Of course he knew nothing of that. And even if he had known, what difference would it have made to a cowardly man like the Fifth Rank officer? ...

Now, was the hero of this story a man born only to be despised, with no hopes of his own? Not entirely. For five or six years the Fifth Rank officer had been abnormally attached to a thing called yam gruel. Yam gruel was a porridge made by slicing mountain yam into it and cooking it in sweet vine syrup. At that time it was considered the finest of delicacies, served even at the tables of sovereigns. Naturally, then, such a man as our Fifth Rank officer had it pass his lips only once a year, on the occasion of special banquet guests. Even then, the amount he could drink was only enough to wet his throat. And so, from long before, the wish to drink his fill of yam gruel had become his one desire. Of course he had never spoken of it to anyone. Indeed, he himself probably never consciously recognized that it was the desire running through his whole life. But the truth is that it would not be too much to say he lived for it. Human beings sometimes devote their whole lives to a desire that may or may not ever be fulfilled. Anyone who laughs at such folly is, in the end, no more than a passerby on the roadside of life.

Still, the thing the Fifth Rank officer dreamed of, “having all the yam gruel he wanted,” came true more easily than one might expect. The purpose of this tale of yam gruel is to tell how that happened.

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One year, on the second day of the New Year, there was what was called a special banquet at Mototsune’s residence. (A special banquet was a feast held on the same day as the Great Banquet at the residence of a Regent or Chancellor, where high courtiers from ministers downward were invited; in substance it differed little from the Great Banquet.) The Fifth Rank officer, mixed in among the other samurai, partook of the leftovers. In those days there was not yet the custom of packing food away, and the leftover dishes were eaten communally by the household’s retainers. To be sure, even if it was said to rival a Great Banquet, this was long ago, and for all the number of dishes there was little of real merit: rice cakes, rabbit-shaped cakes, steamed abalone, dried birds, little fish from Uji, crucian carp from Omi, sliced sea bream, salmon roe, grilled octopus, giant prawns, large oranges, small oranges, mandarins, skewered persimmons, and the like. Only among them was the familiar yam gruel. Every year the Fifth Rank officer looked forward to this yam gruel; but because there were always so many people, he never got much. This year in particular there was very little. And perhaps it was only his imagination, but it tasted much better than usual. So after drinking it, as he gazed intently at the now-empty bowl and wiped from his thin mustache the drops clinging there with the palm of his hand, he said, to no one in particular, “When will the day come, I wonder, when I can have as much of this as I please?”

“So the lord gentleman has never had his fill of yam gruel?”

Before the Fifth Rank officer had finished speaking, someone laughed. It was a deep, unhurried, martial voice. Raising his hunched neck, the Fifth Rank officer looked timidly in that direction. The owner of the voice was Fujiwara no Toshihito, son of Tokinaga, the Minister of Popular Affairs, who at the time was also in Mototsune’s service. He was a powerfully built giant, broad-shouldered and towering over the rest, and was sitting there cracking chestnuts and downing cups of black sake. He seemed already quite drunk.

“A pitiable thing indeed,” said Toshihito, seeing the Fifth Rank officer raise his head, and went on in a tone mixing contempt and pity. “If that is your wish, Toshihito shall give you your fill.”

A dog that is always being tormented does not easily come near even when someone offers it meat. The Fifth Rank officer, wearing that smile that looked as though he might be either laughing or crying, merely compared Toshihito’s face and the empty bowl with equal attention.

“Well?”

“...”

“What do you say?”

“...”

By now the Fifth Rank officer began to feel everyone’s eyes turning toward him. Whatever answer he gave, he would likely invite the jeers of the whole company again. Indeed, it almost seemed that no matter what he said, he would be made a fool of in the end. He hesitated. If at that moment the other man had not said, in a slightly impatient tone, “If you don’t want it, I won’t insist,” the Fifth Rank officer would perhaps have gone on forever comparing the bowl and Toshihito.

At last he answered in a flurry:

“No... I am deeply obliged.”

Everyone who heard this exchange burst out laughing at once. There were even those who mimicked his answer: “No... I am deeply obliged.” Above the shallow bowls and tall stands piled with oranges and mandarins, a wave of crumpled and stiff-eboshi caps swayed all together with the laughter. Loudest and merriest of all was Toshihito himself.

“Then I shall invite you one of these days,” he said, and with that his face twitched slightly. The laugh rising in his throat and the sake he had just drunk had collided there. “...That is settled, then.”

“I am deeply obliged.”

Blushing, stammering, the Fifth Rank officer repeated the same answer again. Needless to say, the whole company laughed again. As for Toshihito, who had pressed him only in order to make him say it, he shook his broad shoulders and roared with laughter even more than before. This wild northerner understood only two ways of living: one was drinking sake, the other was laughing.

Fortunately, however, the center of conversation soon drifted away from the two of them. Perhaps the others found it unpleasant, even in mockery, to focus the whole room’s attention on this red-nosed Fifth Rank officer. At any rate, one topic gave way to another, and by the time the drink and dishes were nearly exhausted, the talk that had captured everyone’s interest was about a certain student-retainer who had tried to mount a horse with both feet stuck into one side of his leggings. But the Fifth Rank officer alone seemed not to hear any of the other stories at all. Presumably the two characters “yam gruel” had taken complete possession of all his thoughts. Though there was roasted pheasant before him, he did not touch it. Though there was a cup of black sake, he did not put it to his lips. Instead he sat with both hands on his knees, his temples touched with frost-white hair flushing shyly like a girl meeting a suitor, gazing forever at the empty black-lacquer bowl and smiling foolishly to himself....

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Four or five days later, one morning, there were two men riding quietly along the road to Awataguchi that followed the bank of the Kamo River. One was a man in a deep blue hunting robe and trousers of the same color, wearing an embossed sword, with “black beard and handsome side-locks.” The other was a shabby samurai of about forty in a dingy blue-gray suikan, with two thinly padded garments layered beneath it. The slovenly way his sash was tied, his red nose wet around the nostrils with mucus, and the general wretchedness of everything about him made for a truly miserable sight. The horses, to be sure, were both fine three-year-olds, the first a buckskin and the second a dapple-gray, swift enough to make passing peddlers and samurai turn to look. Behind them followed two more men hurrying not to fall behind the horses’ pace, evidently a baggage servant and a manservant. It hardly needs saying that this party was Toshihito and the Fifth Rank officer.

Though it was winter, the day was still and clear. Among the pale stones of the riverbank there was not enough wind even to stir the leaves of the dead mugwort growing by the murmuring water. Low willows by the river, their branches bare, received sunlight as smooth as syrup, and even the tail of the wagtail perched at their tops cast a sharp moving shadow on the road. The rounded shoulder rising above the dark green of the Eastern Hills like frost-burned velvet was probably Mount Hiei. Amid all this, the two rode on toward Awataguchi at leisure, the mother-of-pearl inlay of their saddles glittering dazzlingly in the sun, without even applying the whip.

“Where is it, may I ask, that you said you would take me?” the Fifth Rank officer asked, awkwardly handling reins in hands unaccustomed to them.

“Just there ahead. Not so far as to trouble yourself over.”

“Then perhaps somewhere around Awataguchi?”

“You may think so for the time being.”

When Toshihito had invited the Fifth Rank officer out that morning, he had said there was a place near the Eastern Hills where hot water welled up, and that they should go there. The red-nosed Fifth Rank officer had believed him. He had not bathed for some time, and for days now his whole body had been itching. To be treated to yam gruel and, on top of that, to have a hot bath as well would be happiness indeed. Thinking this, he had mounted the dapple-gray horse Toshihito had had led out for him beforehand. But after riding abreast this far, it seemed that Toshihito had no intention of stopping anywhere nearby. Indeed, while they were still talking, they had already passed Awataguchi.

“So it is not Awataguchi, then.”

“Indeed not. A little farther on.”

Toshihito, smiling faintly, kept his horse moving calmly, deliberately avoiding looking at the Fifth Rank officer’s face. The houses on both sides became fewer and fewer, until now all that could be seen were crows pecking for food over broad winter fields, and the snow lingering in the mountain shade faintly smoked blue. Though the sky was fair, the spiky treetops thrusting painfully into it had a chill to them somehow.

“Then perhaps around Yamashina?”

“Yamashina is already behind us. Farther still.”

Sure enough, while they spoke, Yamashina too was left behind. Not only that, but before long even Sekiyama was past, and by a little after noon they had come at last before Miidera Temple. At Miidera there was a monk with whom Toshihito was on familiar terms. The two visited him and were treated to lunch. When that was over they mounted their horses again and hurried on. Compared with the road they had traveled so far, the way ahead showed far fewer signs of habitation. And in those days especially, brigands were running rampant in all directions; it was a dangerous age. The Fifth Rank officer, hunching his back still lower, looked up at Toshihito’s face and asked:

“We are still going farther, then?”

Toshihito smiled. It was the smile of a child who has been up to mischief and seems about to be found out by an elder. The wrinkles drawn to the tip of his nose and the slackening muscles at the corners of his eyes seemed to waver between breaking into laughter and holding it back. And then at last he said:

“To tell the truth, I was thinking of taking you as far as Tsuruga.” Laughing, Toshihito raised his whip and pointed to the distant sky. Beneath the whip, shining in the afternoon sun like a target, was Lake Omi.

The Fifth Rank officer panicked.

“Tsuruga? You mean that Tsuruga in Echizen? That Tsuruga in Echizen...?”

He had often heard, of course, that since Toshihito had become the son-in-law of Fujiwara no Aritsune of Tsuruga, he spent much of his time living there. But never until this very moment had he imagined that Toshihito meant to take him all the way there. To begin with, how could they possibly reach Echizen Province safely, separated from it by so many mountains and rivers, with only these two attendants? Especially now, when there were rumors everywhere of travelers on the highways being killed by bandits. The Fifth Rank officer looked at Toshihito as though pleading.

“But that is outrageous. I thought it was the Eastern Hills, and it turned out to be Yamashina. I thought it was Yamashina, and it turned out to be Miidera. And now, in the end, Tsuruga in Echizen? Whatever can this mean? If you had said so from the start, I could at least have brought some servants with me. Tsuruga? This is impossible.”

The Fifth Ranker, all but on the verge of tears, muttered to himself. If the thought of someday “having his fill of yam gruel” had not bolstered his courage, he would probably have parted company there and gone back to Kyoto alone.

“Think of one Toshihito as equal to a thousand men. You needn’t worry about the road.”

Seeing how flustered the Fifth Ranker was, Toshihito gave a slight frown and laughed mockingly. Then he called over an attendant, slung the jar the man had brought onto his back, took from him the black-lacquered longbow as well, laid it crosswise over the saddle, and rode on ahead. Once matters had come to this, the spineless Fifth Ranker had no choice but to submit blindly to Toshihito’s will. So, casting uneasy glances over the desolate plain around him, mumbling fragments of the Kannon Sutra under his breath from half memory, and rubbing that familiar red nose against the front of his saddle, he let his uncertain horse plod forward as listlessly as ever.

The plain over which their horses’ hoofbeats echoed was covered in a vast growth of yellow reeds; here and there shallow pools reflected the blue sky so coldly that one felt they might freeze over just as they were at any moment in that winter afternoon. At the edge of the plain stretched a range of mountains. Because they stood with the sun behind them, they showed none of the glitter one would expect from lingering snow, but only a long belt of dark purplish shadow. Even these were often hidden from the eyes of the two attendants by sparse clumps of withered pampas grass, bleak and forlorn. Then Toshihito suddenly turned toward the Fifth Ranker and called out:

“There, a fine messenger has come. I shall send word to Tsuruga.”

The Fifth Ranker did not understand what Toshihito meant, so he timidly looked in the direction indicated by the bow. It was not a place where one would expect to see a human being at all. There was only a single fox, walking lazily through a patch of brush over which wild grapevine or something similar had wound itself, its warm-colored fur exposed to the slanting sun. Then, in the very moment he was watching it, the fox suddenly sprang in alarm and dashed off wildly. Toshihito had cracked his whip and started galloping his horse in that direction. Forgetting himself, the Fifth Ranker followed after him. The attendants, of course, could not lag behind either. For a while the clatter of hooves striking stones rang sharply, breaking the silence of the waste; but when they saw Toshihito stop his horse, he had already somehow caught the fox and was dangling it upside down by its hind legs beside his saddle. He must have run it down until it could go no farther, then thrown it beneath his horse and taken it alive. Wiping the sweat that had gathered in his thin mustache, the Fifth Ranker at last rode up beside him.

“Now then, fox, listen well.” Holding the fox high before his eyes, Toshihito deliberately put on a solemn voice and said, “Go tonight to the mansion of Toshihito of Tsuruga and say this: ‘Toshihito is about to set out at once, unexpectedly bringing a guest with him. Around the Hour of the Snake tomorrow, send men to meet us near Takashima. Have them bring two saddled pack horses as well.’ Mind you don’t forget.”

As soon as he had finished, Toshihito gave the fox a swing and flung it far into a distant thicket.

“It’s running! Look at it run!”

The two attendants, who had only just caught up, clapped their hands and shouted as they watched the fox flee. Its back, the color of dead leaves, raced straight through the evening sunlight, heedless of roots or stones, as if it would run on forever. They could see it very clearly from where they stood. In chasing the fox, they had somehow come to the point just above where the plain sloped gently down and merged with the dry bed of a river.

“A messenger of extraordinary reach indeed,” said the Fifth Ranker, letting naive admiration and awe spill from him as he gazed up anew at the face of this rough warrior of the wilds, who could command even a fox. He had no leisure to think about how wide the gulf was between himself and Toshihito. He only felt reassured that because Toshihito’s will extended so far, his own will, sheltered within it, had gained that much more freedom. Flattery, perhaps, is born most naturally at just such a moment. Even if the reader should later detect something of the buffoon in the attitude of the red-nosed Fifth Ranker, that alone should not lead one rashly to doubt the man’s character.

The fox that had been thrown aside tumbled down the slope as if rolling, then nimbly skipped among the stones of the dry riverbed, and this time ran diagonally and vigorously up the opposite bank. Glancing back as it climbed, it saw that the band of warriors who had captured it by hand was still standing on horseback far away upon the slope. All of them looked tiny, no larger than fingers held together. Above all, the cream-colored and dapple-gray horses in the setting sun stood out in the frost-laden air with a sharpness almost more vivid than a painting.

The fox turned its head again and ran off like the wind through the dead grass.

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The party arrived near Takashima around the Hour of the Snake the next day, exactly as planned. It was a small village on the shore of Lake Biwa; unlike the day before, it lay beneath a heavily overcast sky, with only a scattering of thatched huts here and there. Through the pine trees growing along the bank, the lake could be seen, gray ripples spreading over it like a mirror that had been neglected and left unpolished, bleak and cold. When they came this far, Toshihito looked back at the Fifth Ranker and said:

“Look there. It seems the men have come to meet us.”

And indeed, twenty or thirty men were hurrying toward them through the pines by the lakeshore, some mounted, some on foot, leading two saddled pack horses. Their hunting robes fluttered in the cold wind. Before long they drew near; and as soon as they did, those who were mounted hurriedly dismounted, while those on foot crouched by the roadside, all of them respectfully waiting for Toshihito.

“It would seem that fox really did serve as messenger.”

“A beast born with magical powers can easily manage a task of that sort,” Toshihito replied.

While the two were speaking, the party came to where the retainers were waiting.

“You’ve done well,” Toshihito called out. The men who had been crouching quickly rose and took the bridles of the two horses. All at once the atmosphere brightened.

“Something very strange happened last night, my lord.”

Before the two had even fully sat down on the spread hides after dismounting, an old retainer with white hair, dressed in a cypress-bark-colored hunting robe, came before Toshihito and spoke. “What was it?” Toshihito asked with easy composure, offering the Fifth Ranker some bamboo shoots and food from a broken basket the men had brought.

“Well, my lord, around the Hour of the Dog last night, my lady suddenly fell into a strange state and seemed no longer herself. ‘I am the fox of Sakamoto,’ she said. ‘I have come to deliver the message our lord commanded today, so come close and listen well.’ When all of us went before her, she told us this: ‘Our lord is just now about to set out unexpectedly with a guest. Around the Hour of the Snake tomorrow, send the men to meet him near Takashima, and have them bring two saddled pack horses as well.’ That is what she said.”

“Well now, that truly is remarkable,” said the Fifth Ranker, looking closely from Toshihito’s face to the retainer’s and back again, offering a response that seemed designed to satisfy both.

“She did not merely say it, either,” the retainer went on. “She trembled all over as if in great terror, and kept weeping, saying again and again, ‘Do not be late. If you are late, I shall incur my lord’s displeasure.’”

“And after that?”

“After that she simply fell asleep. Even when we set out to come here, she had still not awakened.”

“Well, what do you say to that?” When the retainer had finished, Toshihito turned to the Fifth Ranker and said proudly, “Even beasts serve Toshihito.”

“There is nothing for it but to stand amazed,” said the Fifth Ranker. Scratching his red nose, he dipped his head a little and then, affectingly, opened his mouth in astonishment. Drops of the wine he had just drunk clung to his mustache.

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That night, the Fifth Ranker lay awake in one room of Toshihito’s mansion, staring absently at the light of the standing lamp as the long night dragged on without sleep. As he did so, the pine hills, the streams, the winter fields he had crossed while laughing and talking with Toshihito and his retainers on the way there that evening, and even the smells of grass, leaves, stones, and smoke from brushfires, rose one by one in his mind. Above all he remembered the feeling of relief when, at last, through the dusk haze, he reached this mansion and saw the red flames of charcoal kindled in a long chest brazier. Yet now, lying there as he was, even that seemed like something that had happened in a far distant past. Stretching out his legs comfortably beneath a yellow robe padded with four or five inches of cotton, the Fifth Ranker gazed vaguely at his own sleeping form.

Beneath the outer robe he wore not one but two thickly padded garments of soft pale silk that Toshihito had lent him. They were warm enough to bring out a sweat. On top of that, there was the wine he had drunk with dinner. Beyond the shutter at his pillow was the broad courtyard bright with frost, but in this drowsy state even that did not trouble him at all. In every respect it was heaven and earth compared with life in his own quarters back in Kyoto. And yet, despite all this, there was in his heart a vague uneasiness, as if things were somehow out of balance. For one thing, he found the passing of time painfully slow. Yet at the same time he felt as if dawn, which would mean the moment of eating yam gruel, must not come too soon. And after those two contradictory feelings struggled against one another, there remained, like the day’s thin chill weather, an unsettled mood born of a sudden change in fortune. All of this got in the way, so that even all this warmth could not easily invite sleep.

Then he heard someone outside in the broad courtyard calling out in a loud voice. From the sound of it, it seemed to be the white-haired retainer who had come to meet them on the road that day, announcing something. His dry, withered voice, perhaps because it rang through the frost, struck the Fifth Ranker almost like a winter gale, each word seeming to bite into his bones.

“Listen, all you servants here. Our lord commands that by tomorrow morning, before the Hour of the Hare, every man and woman, old and young alike, is to bring one yam root from the mountains, three sun across at the cut end and five shaku long. Do not forget. Before the Hour of the Hare!”

After it had been repeated two or three times, the signs of people faded, and all at once the place returned to the quiet of a winter night. In that stillness, the oil in the lamp hissed. The flame, like red silk floss, wavered softly. The Fifth Ranker suppressed a yawn and once more sank into vague, wandering thought. If they were gathering mountain yams, then naturally they meant to make yam gruel of them. The moment he thought so, the unease that he had forgotten while his attention was fixed outside came back into his heart before he knew it. What had grown stronger than before was his feeling that he did not want to get to that yam gruel too quickly; maliciously, it would not leave the center of his thoughts. If “having his fill of yam gruel” were to become a reality so easily, then the long years he had patiently spent waiting for it would somehow begin to seem utterly wasted. If possible, he wanted some accident suddenly to occur so that for a time he could not have the gruel after all, and only then, once that obstacle was gone, to obtain it at last. He wanted matters to proceed by some such process as that. While thoughts like these circled round and round in one place like a spinning toy, the Fifth Ranker, worn out from travel, eventually fell fast asleep.

When he woke the next morning, the matter of the mountain yams from the night before at once came back to mind. So before anything else he raised the shutter of his room and looked out. Unaware of it, he had overslept, and the Hour of the Hare had already passed. In the broad courtyard, on four or five long straw mats, things like logs had been piled up into a mountain, so high they almost touched the projecting eaves of the cypress-bark roof. There must have been two or three thousand of them. Looking closely, he saw that every one was an enormous mountain yam, three sun across at the cut end and five shaku long.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, the Fifth Ranker was struck with a kind of panic-like astonishment and stared blankly around him. Here and there in the courtyard, five or six great cauldrons, each large enough to hold five koku, hung over new stakes that seemed to have been set up just for the occasion, and dozens of young women servants in white cloth jackets moved busily about them. Some fed the fires; some raked the ashes; others drew sweet vine syrup into fresh white-wood buckets and poured it into the pots. All were occupied with preparing the yam gruel, so frantically busy it made one dizzy. The smoke rising from beneath the cauldrons and the steam boiling up from within them mingled with the dawn mist that still lingered, veiling the whole courtyard in gray so thick that nothing could clearly be made out. The only thing red was the fierce blaze of the fires under the cauldrons. Everything he saw and heard made it seem as though he had wandered into a battlefield or a burning district. The Fifth Ranker thought again, now more vividly than ever, of these gigantic yams being turned into yam gruel in those giant cauldrons. He thought of how he himself had traveled all the way from Kyoto to Tsuruga in Echizen for the sake of eating that gruel. The more he thought of it, the more pitiful the whole thing became. His much-to-be-pitied appetite, by that time, had already been cut in half.

An hour later, the Fifth Ranker sat down to breakfast with Toshihito and Toshihito’s father-in-law, Arito. Before him stood a dreadful sight: a silver container that must have held a full to, filled to the brim like the sea with yam gruel. Earlier he had watched several young men skillfully working thin blades, slicing through those mountain yams stacked to the eaves one after another with tremendous speed. Then he had seen the servant women running back and forth, scooping every last piece into the huge cauldrons. Finally, when not a single yam remained on the straw mats, he had seen several columns of steam, heavy with the smell of yam and sweet vine syrup, billowing magnificently from the cauldrons up into the clear morning sky. Having witnessed all this with his own eyes, it was hardly surprising that now, when confronted with the yam gruel in the silver vessel, he felt full already before even tasting it. The Fifth Ranker sat before the bowl, awkwardly wiping the sweat from his brow.

“So I hear you have never yet eaten yam gruel to your heart’s content. Please, do not stand on ceremony. Help yourself.”

Arito, the father-in-law, ordered the young pages to bring out several more silver containers and line them up on the meal trays. Every one of them was filled nearly to overflowing with yam gruel. The Fifth Ranker shut his eyes, and with his nose, already red enough, growing redder still, ladled about half a container into a large earthenware bowl and forced himself to drink it down.

“My father says so too. Pray, make no ceremony of it.”

From beside him Toshihito, smiling maliciously, pushed yet another fresh container toward him as he said this. The one in real trouble was the Fifth Ranker. If he were to speak honestly, from the start he had not wanted to swallow even one bowl of yam gruel. Even so, enduring it as best he could, he had somehow managed to finish only half the container. If he drank any more, it would come back up before it even passed his throat; but if he did not drink, that too would be to slight the kindness of Toshihito and Arito. So he shut his eyes again and drank another third of what remained. After that he could not swallow another mouthful.

“I am most deeply obliged. I have already had quite enough. Truly, I am most deeply obliged.”

The Fifth Ranker stammered this out. He must have been in dire straits, for beads of sweat, astonishing for wintertime, hung from both his mustache and the tip of his nose.

“What a tiny appetite. It seems our guest is holding back out of politeness. Come, come, what are you all doing there?”

At Arito’s words, the pages moved to ladle more yam gruel from a fresh silver container into an earthenware bowl. The Fifth Ranker waved both hands as if brushing flies away, earnestly trying to show that he must decline.

“No, I have had more than enough. Forgive me, but truly, more than enough.”

If at that moment Toshihito had not suddenly pointed to the eaves of the house opposite and said, “Look there,” Arito might well have gone on urging more yam gruel upon the Fifth Ranker without end. But fortunately Toshihito’s voice drew everyone’s attention toward the eaves. The morning sun was shining directly on the cypress-bark roof. And in that dazzling light, bathing its glossy fur, sat quietly a single animal. It was the wild fox of Sakamoto that Toshihito had captured by hand on the dead moor road two days before.

“It seems the fox too has come to pay its respects for a taste of yam gruel. You men there, give it something to eat.”

Toshihito’s command was carried out at once. The fox leaped down from the eaves and immediately partook of the feast of yam gruel in the courtyard.

Watching the fox drink the gruel, the Fifth Ranker fondly recalled to mind the man he himself had been before coming here. That was the man mocked by so many other warriors. The man whom even the street boys of Kyoto cursed with, “What’s this? You red-nosed fool.” The pitiable, lonely man who wandered up and down Suzaku Avenue in faded hunting robes and hakama, like a stray mongrel with no master. And yet at the same time he had also been a happy man, because he had preserved, as his one precious desire, the wish to eat his fill of yam gruel. Along with the relief of knowing that he would not have to drink any more of it, he felt the sweat all over his face gradually drying from the tip of his nose outward. Though the sky was clear, the morning air in Tsuruga was piercingly cold. The Fifth Ranker hurriedly covered his nose and, turning toward the silver container, gave a great sneeze.

(August, 1916)