t
surely is needed to counterbalance the cruel folly of his master. Both
qualities of this later cleric were the needed light in this period so
dark for men. In which the wife, more faithful to tradition and the
land, drove her dagger into the Sho[u]gun's heart, and kept from his
seat and succession the favoured person of his catamite.[37] To be sure
the little lady, of _kuge_ not _samurai_ stock, daughter of the Kwampaku
(Premier) Takatsukasa Fusasuke, of courage and truly noble stock, then
used the dagger on herself; and has kept busy ever since the historians
of Nippon, official and other kinds, in explanation of how "it didn't
happen." This is but a tale of outside scribes, to explain the taking
off between night and morning of a perfectly well man (or divinity)--not
sanctified with official and Tokugawal benediction; and no wonder. The
tale and the event was not one to brag of. And the lady died too--very
shortly.

The eagerness to ascribe a local habitat to the story of the Sarayashiki
has led to-day to some curious confusions, dovetailing into each other.
To follow Ho[u]gyu[u]sha--in the far off quarter of Yanaka Sansaki, near
the Negishi cut of the Northern Railway, is the Nonaka well. Despite its
far removal this _pool_ is ascribed to O'Kiku, as the one time well of
the Yoshida Goten. As fact--in Sho[u]ho[u] a harlot, by name Kashiwaki,
ransomed by a guest here established herself. Death or desertion cut her
off from the lover, and she turned nun. The place at that time was mere
moorland, and the well near by the hut had the name of the Nonaka no
Ido--the well amid the moor. In time the lady and her frailty
disappeared, and the kindly villagers buried her close to the hut, scene
of her penance.

"Vain the tranquil water mid the moor--mere surface;
Gone, nought remains--of the reflection."

Her well? People call it now the _yobi-ido_, the calling well, a pool
furnished by springs and some thirty feet in diameter. Now only a few
_cho[u]_ (hundred yards) to the north of Sansaki, at the Komizo no Hashi
of Sakanoshita, is an old mound called the grave of O'Kiku. "Here a
small seven faced monument has been erected. But this is not the O'Kiku
of the Sarayashiki. This woman named Kiku died of an incurable disease.
As her dying wish she asserted that any who suffered pain from incurable
disease had but to pray to her to receive relief. With this vow she
died." It is the connection between this Kiku and the _