On the twenty-second day of the sixth month I began to sew a kimono which father had asked me to make for him; but I felt ill, and could not do much. However, I was able to finish the work on the first day of the new year [1897].
... Now we were very happy because of the child that was to be born. And I thought how proud and glad my parents would be at having a grandchild for the first time.
On the tenth day of the fifth month I went out with mother to worship Shiogama-Sama,[28] and also to visit Sengakuji. There we saw the tombs of the Shijin-shichi Shi [Forty-seven Rōnin], and many relics of their history. We returned by railroad, taking the train from Shinagawa to Shinjiku. At Shiochō-Sanchōmé I parted from mother, and I got home by six o'clock.
On the eighth day of the sixth month, at four o'clock in the afternoon, a boy was born. Both mother and child appeared to be as well as could be wished; and the child much resembled my husband; and its eyes were large and black.... But I must say that it was a very small child; for, though it ought to have been born in the eighth month, it was born indeed in the sixth.... At seven o'clock in the evening of the same day, when the time came to give the child some medicine, we saw, by the light of the lamp, that he was looking all about, with his big eyes wide open. During that night the child slept in my mother's bosom. As we had been told that he must be kept very warm, because he was only a seven-months' child, it was decided that he should be kept in the bosom by day as well as by night.
Next day—the ninth day of the sixth month—at half-past six o'clock in the afternoon, he suddenly died....
*
—"Brief is the time of pleasure, and quickly turns to pain; and whatsoever is born must necessarily die"[29];—that, indeed, is a true saying about this world.