Japanese Fairy Tales
The Prince’s astonishment and indignation knew no bounds. He gave up
the hunt at once and hurried home with his daughter. One of the company
galloped ahead to inform the household of the glad news, and the
step-mother hearing what had happened, and fearful of meeting her
husband now that her wickedness was discovered, fled from the house and
returned in disgrace to her father’s roof, and nothing more was heard
of her.
The old servant Katoda was rewarded with the highest promotion in his
master’s service, and lived happily to the end of his days, devoted to
the little Princess, who never forgot that she owed her life to this
faithful retainer. She was no longer troubled by an unkind step-mother,
and her days passed happily and quietly with her father.
As Prince Toyonari had no son, he adopted a younger son of one of the
Court nobles to be his heir, and to marry his daughter Hase-Hime, and
in a few years the marriage took place. Hase-Hime lived to a good old
age, and all said that she was the wisest, most devout, and most
beautiful mistress that had ever reigned in Prince Toyonari’s ancient
house. She had the joy of presenting her son, the future lord of the
family, to her father just before he retired from active life.
To this day there is preserved a piece of needle-work in one of the
Buddhist temples of Kioto. It is a beautiful piece of tapestry, with
the figure of Buddha embroidered in the silky threads drawn from the
stem of the lotus. This is said to have been the work of the hands of
the good Princess Hase.
THE STORY OF THE MAN WHO DID NOT WISH TO DIE
Long, long ago there lived a man called Sentaro. His surname meant
“Millionaire,” but although he was not so rich as all that, he was
still very far removed from being poor. He had inherited a small
fortune from his father and lived on this, spending his time
carelessly, without any serious thoughts of work, till he was about
thirty-two years of age.
One day, without any reason whatsoever, the thought of death and
sickness came to him. The idea of falling ill or dying made him very
wretched.
“I should like to live,” he said to himself, “till I am five or six
hundred years old at least, free from all sickness. The ordinary span
of a man’s life is very short.”
He wondered whether it were possible, by living simply and frugally
henceforth, to prolong his life as long as he wished.
He knew there were many stories in ancient history of emperors who had
lived a thousand years, and there was a Princess of Yamato, who, it was
said, lived to the age of five hundred. This was the latest story of a
very long life record.
Sentaro had often heard the tale of the Chinese King named
Shin-no-Shiko. He was one of the most able and powerful rulers in
Chinese history. He built all the large palaces, and also the famous
great wall of China. He had everything in the world he could wish for,
but in spite of all his happiness and the luxury and the splendor of
his Court, the wisdom of his councilors and the glory of his reign, he
was miserable because he knew that one day he must die and leave it
all.
When Shin-no-Shiko went to bed at night, when he rose in the morning,
as he went through his day, the thought of death was always with him.
He could not get away from it. Ah—if only he could find the “Elixir of
Life,” he would be happy.
The Emperor at last called a meeting of his courtiers and asked them
all if they could not find for him the “Elixir of Life” of which he had
so often read and heard.
One old courtier, Jofuku by name, said that far away across the seas
there was a country called Horaizan, and that certain hermits lived
there who possessed the secret of the “Elixir of Life.” Whoever drank
of this wonderful draught lived forever.
The Emperor ordered Jofuku to set out for the land of Horaizan, to find
the hermits, and to bring him back a phial of the magic elixir. He gave
Jofuku one of his best junks, fitted it out for him, and loaded it with
great quantities of treasures and precious stones for Jofuku to take as
presents to the hermits.
Jofuku sailed for the land of Horaizan, but he never returned to the
waiting Emperor; but ever since that time Mount Fuji has been said to
be the fabled Horaizan and the home of hermits who had the secret of
the elixir, and Jofuku has been worshiped as their patron god.
Now Sentaro determined to set out to find the hermits, and if he could,
to become one, so that he might obtain the water of perpetual life. He
remembered that as a child he had been told that not only did these
hermits live on Mount Fuji, but that they were said to inhabit all the
very high peaks.
So he left his old home to the care of his relatives, and started out
on his quest. He traveled through all the mountainous regions of the
land, climbing to the tops of the highest peaks, but never a hermit did
he find.
At last, after wandering in an unknown region for many days, he met a
hunter.
“Can you tell me,” asked Sentaro, “where the hermits live who have the
Elixir of Life?”
“No.” said the hunter; “I can’t tell you where such hermits live, but
there is a notorious robber living in these parts. It is said that he
is chief of a band of two hundred followers.”
This odd answer irritated Sentaro very much, and he thought how foolish
it was to waste more time in looking for the hermits in this way, so he
decided to go at once to the shrine of Jofuku, who is worshiped as the
patron god of the hermits in the south of Japan.
Sentaro reached the shrine and prayed for seven days, entreating Jofuku
to show him the way to a hermit who could give him what he wanted so
much to find.
At midnight of the seventh day, as Sentaro knelt in the temple, the
door of the innermost shrine flew open, and Jofuku appeared in a
luminous cloud, and calling to Sentaro to come nearer, spoke thus:
“Your desire is a very selfish one and cannot be easily granted. You
think that you would like to become a hermit so as to find the Elixir
of Life. Do you know how hard a hermit’s life is? A hermit is only
allowed to eat fruit and berries and the bark of pine trees; a hermit
must cut himself off from the world so that his heart may become as
pure as gold and free from every earthly desire. Gradually after
following these strict rules, the hermit ceases to feel hunger or cold
or heat, and his body becomes so light that he can ride on a crane or a
carp, and can walk on water without getting his feet wet.”
“You, Sentaro, are fond of good living and of every comfort. You are
not even like an ordinary man, for you are exceptionally idle, and more
sensitive to heat and cold than most people. You would never be able to
go barefoot or to wear only one thin dress in the winter time! Do you
think that you would ever have the patience or the endurance to live a
hermit’s life?”
“In answer to your prayer, however, I will help you in another way. I
will send you to the country of Perpetual Life, where death never
comes—where the people live forever!”
Saying this, Jofuku put into Sentaro’s hand a little crane made of
paper, telling him to sit on its back and it would carry him there.
Sentaro obeyed wonderingly. The crane grew large enough for him to ride
on it with comfort. It then spread its wings, rose high in the air, and
flew away over the mountains right out to sea.
Sentaro was at first quite frightened; but by degrees he grew
accustomed to the swift flight through the air. On and on they went for
thousands of miles. The bird never stopped for rest or food, but as it
was a paper bird it doubtless did not require any nourishment, and
strange to say, neither did Sentaro.
After several days they reached an island. The crane flew some distance
inland and then alighted.
As soon as Sentaro got down from the bird’s back, the crane folded up
of its own accord and flew into his pocket.
Now Sentaro began to look about him wonderingly, curious to see what
the country of Perpetual Life was like. He walked first round about the
country and then through the town. Everything was, of course, quite
strange, and different from his own land. But both the land and the
people seemed prosperous, so he decided that it would be good for him
to stay there and took up lodgings at one of the hotels.
The proprietor was a kind man, and when Sentaro told him that he was a
stranger and had come to live there, he promised to arrange everything
that was necessary with the governor of the city concerning Sentaro’s
sojourn there. He even found a house for his guest, and in this way
Sentaro obtained his great wish and became a resident in the country of
Perpetual Life.
Within the memory of all the islanders no man had ever died there, and
sickness was a thing unknown. Priests had come over from India and
China and told them of a beautiful country called Paradise, where
happiness and bliss and contentment fill all men’s hearts, but its
gates could only be reached by dying. This tradition was handed down
for ages from generation to generation—but none knew exactly what death
was except that it led to Paradise.
Quite unlike Sentaro and other ordinary people, instead of having a
great dread of death, they all, both rich and poor, longed for it as
something good and desirable. They were all tired of their long, long
lives, and longed to go to the happy land of contentment called
Paradise of which the priests had told them centuries ago.
All this Sentaro soon found out by talking to the islanders. He found
himself, according to his ideas, in the land of Topsyturvydom.
Everything was upside down. He had wished to escape from dying. He had
come to the land of Perpetual Life with great relief and joy, only to
find that the inhabitants themselves, doomed never to die, would
consider it bliss to find death.
What he had hitherto considered poison these people ate as good food,
and all the things to which he had been accustomed as food they
rejected. Whenever any merchants from other countries arrived, the rich
people rushed to them eager to buy poisons. These they swallowed
eagerly, hoping for death to come so that they might go to Paradise.
But what were deadly poisons in other lands were without effect in this
strange place, and people who swallowed them with the hope of dying,
only found that in a short time they felt better in health instead of
worse.
Vainly they tried to imagine what death could be like. The wealthy
would have given all their money and all their goods if they could but
shorten their lives to two or three hundred years even. Without any
change to live on forever seemed to this people wearisome and sad.
In the chemist shops there was a drug which was in constant demand,
because after using it for a hundred years, it was supposed to turn the
hair slightly gray and to bring about disorders of the stomach.
Sentaro was astonished to find that the poisonous globe-fish was served
up in restaurants as a delectable dish, and hawkers in the streets went
about selling sauces made of Spanish flies. He never saw any one ill
after eating these horrible things, nor did he ever see any one with as
much as a cold.
Sentaro was delighted. He said to himself that he would never grow
tired of living, and that he considered it profane to wish for death.
He was the only happy man on the island. For his part he wished to live
thousands of years and to enjoy life. He set himself up in business,
and for the present never even dreamed of going back to his native
land.
As years went by, however, things did not go as smoothly as at first.
He had heavy losses in business, and several times some affairs went
wrong with his neighbors. This caused him great annoyance.
Time passed like the flight of an arrow for him, for he was busy from