Warriors of Old Japan, and Other Stories

by Yei Theodora Ozaki

At the end of three years the feudal Daimio of Shinano, who always lived in the capital, advertised for a man-servant who was young and strong. One of Taro's kindest neighbours suggested that this was a good opportunity for Taro to make a beginning and that he ought to apply for the place. But others shook their heads and said that Taro was a good-for-nothing fellow, who would never do any good in the world—he would only be a trouble wherever he went.

"Look," they said, "how he behaved to the good Governor, how he dared—just think of it—to ask that great man to pick up the rice-dumpling he had dropped in the road, because he was too atrociously lazy to move out of his shed to get it for himself! Had the Governor been any one else, he would have had him sworded to death on the Spot."

But in spite of all the neighbours' croaking and grumbling, the first man persisted in his idea that the right thing for Taro to do was to try for the place, regardless of opposition. To every one who raised an objection, he answered wisely: "Don't you know the saying that 'Stupid people and scissors depend on the way they are used for their usefulness'; so even this Lazy Taro may change for the better if he is taken up to the capital and made to work. Let us all persuade him to go into service, and let him for pity's sake have a try at something or other. Who knows but this may prove the turning-point in his life? Taro may yet become a useful hard-working man in time, if he is given his proper chance."

When the proposal was first made to Taro, he was very unwilling to do as he was told. He said he knew nothing of the ways of a lord's house; and how could he work, seeing that he was Lazy Taro, who had never done a stroke of work in his life? But his neighbours and friends were determined to make him go. Every day they came to his shed, and talked to him, persuadingly, and at last Taro came round to reason and said that, to please them, he would at any rate go and try to do his best—if he failed, he couldn't help it. When Taro said this, his friends were delighted, and said they would help him get ready. They gave him decent clothes in which to make an appearance at the Daimio's house and then some money for the journey. In this way Lazy Taro left the rural province of Shinano, where he had lived for so many years, and started for the capital of Kyoto. Just as Tokyo is the seat of government nowadays, so Kyoto was in olden times. The Emperor—the Son of Heaven, as he was called—dwelt there in a magnificent palace, and all the great daimios lived near him in state, surrounded by their retainers. The streets of the Imperial City were beautifully built and spotlessly clean, and the houses were far grander than Taro had ever dreamed of—with great sloping roofs and picturesque gates and park-like gardens enclosing them. Very different indeed was the capital from the province of Shinano, from which Taro had come.

The Japanese have a saying, "As different as the moon and the turtle," and what can be more utterly different from the Queen of Night, riding above the clouds in her own bewitching radiance and beauty, attended by innumerable stars, than the mud-burrowing turtle, who may sometimes be seen crawling out from his slime to dry his back in the sunshine? As Taro walked through the streets of the city of Kyoto, he thought of the old proverb, and he said to himself that the Lady Moon was Kyoto and the turtle his old-fashioned Shinano.

Then he noticed how fair of skin the people he met were, for the citizens of Kyoto are famous for their white complexions; and some say it is the purity of the water that gives them such fair skins, while others say that they are of a different race from the yellow-skinned people of the rest of Japan. And how elegantly every one was dressed!

Taro looked down at himself, and saw how dark his skin was, how long his nails, and how rough his clothes were. For the first time in his life he felt ashamed of himself, and repented of his past laziness.

Now he remembered that one of his neighbours in Shinano, kinder and more thoughtful than the rest, had put in his bamboo basket a silken suit of clothes, saying that Taro would be sure to want it in the capital, and that when Taro got on, as he felt sure, somehow or other, that he would, he might pay him back. Recollecting this, Taro stopped at a teahouse and changed his rough cotton suit for the silken one. Then he inquired for the residence of Nijo-Dainagon, the Lord of Shinano, and having made his way there, he entered the large gate and presented himself at the porch, saying that he had come in answer to an advertisement of the Lord of Shinano for a servant, and he begged to be made use of.

When the lord of the house heard that a man had come from his own province to ask for the vacant place in his household, he came out himself to see Taro, and thanked him for his trouble in coming such a long way.

"Work well and diligently, and you will not find service in my house hard or bad!" said Lord Nijo.