Many years ago there lived on the then barren plain of Suruga a woodman by the name of Visu. He was a giant in stature, and lived in a hut with his wife and children. One night, just as Visu was about to fall asleep, he heard a most extraordinary sound coming from under the earth, a sound louder and more terrible than thunder. Visu, thinking that he and his family were about to be destroyed by an earthquake, hastily snatched up the younger children and rushed to the door of the hut, where he saw a most wonderful sight. Instead of the once desolate plain he perceived a great mountain from whose head sprang tongues of flame and dense clouds of smoke! So glorious was the sight of this mountain that had run under the earth for two hundred miles and then suddenly sprung forth on the plain of Suruga that Visu, his wife and family, sat down on the ground as if under a spell. When the sun rose the next morning Visu saw that the mountain had put on robes of opal. It seemed so impressive to him that he called it Fuji-yama ("The Never-dying Mountain"), and so it is called to this day. Such perfect beauty suggested to the woodman the eternal, an idea which no doubt gave rise to the Elixir of Life so frequently associated with this mountain.
Day after day Visu sat and gazed upon Fuji, and was just conjecturing how nice it would be for so imposing a mountain to be able to see her loveliness, when a great lake suddenly stretched before him, shaped like a lute, and so called Biwa.[3]
The Adventures of Visu
One day Visu received a visit from an old priest, who said to him: "Honourable woodman, I am afraid you never pray." Visu replied: "If you had a wife and a large family to keep you would never have time to pray." This remark made the priest angry, and the old man gave the woodcutter a vivid description of the horror of being reborn as a toad, or a mouse, or an insect for millions of years. Such lurid details were not to Visu's liking, and he accordingly promised the priest that in future he would pray. "Work and pray," said the priest as he took his departure.
Unfortunately Visu did nothing but pray. He prayed all day long and refused to do any work, so that his rice crops withered and his wife and family starved. Visu's wife, who had hitherto never said a harsh or bitter word to her husband, now became extremely angry, and, pointing to the poor thin bodies of her children, she exclaimed: "Rise, Visu, take up your axe and do something more helpful to us all than the mere mumbling of prayers!"
Visu was so utterly amazed at what his wife had said that it was some time before he could think of a fitting reply. When he did so his words came hot and strong to the ears of his poor, much-wronged wife.
"Woman," said he, "the Gods come first. You are an impertinent creature to speak to me so, and I will have nothing more to do with you!" Visu snatched up his axe and, without looking round to say farewell, he left the hut, strode out of the wood, and climbed up Fuji-yama, where a mist hid him from sight.
When Visu had seated himself upon the mountain he heard a soft rustling sound, and immediately afterward saw a fox dart into a thicket. Now Visu deemed it extremely lucky to see a fox, and, forgetting his prayers, he sprang up, and ran hither and thither in the hope of again finding this sharp-nosed little creature. He was about to give up the chase when, coming to an open space in a wood, he saw two ladies sitting down by a brook playing go.[4] The woodman was so completely fascinated that he could do nothing but sit down and watch them. There was no sound except the soft click of pieces on the board and the song of the running brook. The ladies took no notice of Visu, for they seemed to be playing a strange game that had no end, a game that entirely absorbed their attention. Visu could not keep his eyes off these fair women. He watched their long black hair and the little quick hands that shot out now and again from their big silk sleeves in order to move the pieces. After he had been sitting there for three hundred years, though to him it was but a summer's afternoon, he saw that one of the players had made a false move. "Wrongs most lovely lady!" he exclaimed excitedly. In a moment these women turned into foxes[5] and ran away.