ÅŒsumi.
Though Ōsumi was comparatively lower in rank than Shiragiku of the “Yamagata-ya� and Karyū of the “Hy�go-ya�, she was a very popular courtesan and more sought after than they. One day she was suddenly taken ill, and her malady increasing in severity she could get no rest even at night. When, worn out with fatigue she finally succeeded in dropping into a fitful slumber, she shrieked and groaned in an agony of terror, while the cold sweat poured in a profuse stream from her quivering frame. Her symptoms were so dreadful that the other inmates of the brothel felt their blood run cold as they gazed on her drawn and terror-stricken countenance and heard her awful cries of fear, but they did their best to alleviate her sufferings and attended her assiduously. Curious to relate, the women who nursed the unhappy sufferer found an immense toad at the side of her couch, and although they flung the loathsome creature away several times it would immediately return and squatting down by the bed would sit gloating over the patient—a portentous and revolting watcher!
At length, notwithstanding the efforts of her attendant physician ÅŒsumi wasted to a skeleton and finally died of the dread disease which had seized upon her, but to the last she uttered the most ghastly and blood-curdling cries and in her delirium expressed a sense of the most awful terror pursuing her to the grave.
It is stated that a certain priest had been in the habit of frequently visiting Ōsumi, and having fallen in love with her tried his best to win the fair courtesan for himself, but failed owing to her having a paramour. The latter had squandered his parent’s money in riotous living and had been driven out of his home on that account. Ōsumi, in order to assist her sweetheart in distress, pretended to be deeply in love with the priest referred to, and by this means inveigled the recreant “Servant of Buddha� into supplying her with considerable sums of money, all of which she promptly gave to her secret lover. One dark night, the deluded priest was foully murdered on the banks of the Nihon-Zutsumi, and it is said that his troubled spirit sometimes passed into the body of a frog which sat haunting the bedside of Ōsumi, and at other times took possession of the body of kamuro and in a hollow sepulchral voice expressed his resentment to the heartless woman who had allured him to death and perdition.
Ko-murasaki (Little Purple.)
(The second of the name.)
The name of this courtesan is known throughout the length and breadth of Japan, and the fame of the fair girl has been spread even to Western lands by means of a story entitled “The Loves of the Gompachi and Komurasaki� given in Mitford’s “Tales of Old Japan�.
She is regarded as a specimen of feminine faithfulness as exhibited by women of her class. She was proficient in the art of literary composition, wrote a beautiful hand, and was well versed in all those other graceful accomplishments which were considered necessary to ladies in this country. It is said that she was the authoress of a popular song called the “Yae-ume� (The double-blossomed Plum) which ran as follows:—
“I am like the azalea which blossoms in the meadows, pluck my flowers ere they fall and are scattered.
“I am like the firefly in the field which lights up the bank like a pine-torch. However impatiently I may long for you and pine to meet you I am like a bird imprisoned in its cage and cannot fly away, and my inexpressible sorrow makes me brood in melancholy.�
The touching story of the loves of Ko-Murasaki and Shirai Gompachi is as follows:—