December 29. As I had surmised, the story of the dead man was worth learning. The family consisted of four,—the father and mother, both very old and feeble, and two sons. It was the eldest son, a man of thirty-four, who had died. He had been sick for seven years. The younger brother, a kurumaya, had been the sole support of the whole family. He had no vehicle of his own, but hired one, paying five sen a day for the use of it. Though strong and a swift runner, he could earn little: there is in these days too much competition for the business to be profitable. It taxed all his powers to support his parents and his ailing brother; nor could he have done it without unfailing self-denial. He never indulged himself even to the extent of a cup of saké; he remained unmarried; he lived only for his filial and fraternal duty.
This was the story of the dead brother: When about twenty years of age, and following the occupation of a fish-seller, he had fallen in love with a pretty servant at an inn. The girl returned his affection. They pledged themselves to each other. But difficulties arose in the way of their marriage.
The girl was pretty enough to have attracted the attention of a man of some means, who demanded her hand in the customary way. She disliked him; but the conditions he was able to offer decided her parents in his favor. Despairing of union, the two lovers resolved to perform jōshi. Somewhere or other they met at night, renewed their pledge in wine, and bade farewell to the world. The young man then killed his sweetheart with one blow of a sword, and immediately afterward cut his own throat with the same weapon. But people rushed into the room before he had expired, took away the sword, sent for the police, and summoned a military surgeon from the garrison. The would-be suicide was removed to the hospital, skillfully nursed back to health, and after some months of convalescence was put on trial for murder.
What sentence was passed I could not fully learn. In those days, Japanese judges used a good deal of personal discretion when dealing with emotional crime; and their exercise of pity had not yet been restricted by codes framed upon Western models. Perhaps in this case they thought that to have survived a jōshi was in itself a severe punishment. Public opinion is less merciful, in such instances, than law. After a term of imprisonment the miserable man was allowed to return to his family, but was placed under perpetual police surveillance. The people shrank from him. He made the mistake of living on. Only his parents and brother remained to him. And soon he became a victim of unspeakable physical suffering; yet he clung to life.
The old wound in his throat, although treated at the time as skillfully as circumstances permitted, began to cause terrible pain. After its apparent healing, some slow cancerous growth commenced to spread from it, reaching into the breathing-passages above and below where the sword-blade had passed. The surgeon's knife, the torture of the cautery, could only delay the end. But the man lingered through seven years of continually increasing agony. There are dark beliefs about the results of betraying the dead,—of breaking the mutual promise to travel together to the Meido. Men said that the hand of the murdered girl always reopened the wound,—undid by night all that the surgeon could accomplish by day. For at night the pain invariably increased, becoming most terrible at the precise hour of the attempted shinjū!
Meanwhile, through abstemiousness and extraordinary self-denial, the family found means to pay for medicines, for attendance, and for more nourishing food than they themselves ever indulged in. They prolonged by all possible means the life that was their shame, their poverty, their burden. And now that death has taken away that burden, they weep!
Perhaps all of us learn to love that which we train ourselves to make sacrifices for, whatever pain it may cause. Indeed, the question might be asked whether we do not love most that which causes us most pain.